^{Picture: Sonia Sieff (Paloma by La Fetiche with Di Gilpin)}

For centuries, knitwear has provided people with high-functioning apparel that bridges the practical, sophisticated and glamorous. KNITWEAR: Chanel To Westwood (which debuted at London’s Fashion And Textile Museum) is a thorough celebration of the form through several decades, weaving together fashion, design and history. ‘There’s something about knitwear that’s innately comforting,’ insists exhibition curator Dennis Nothdruft. ‘We all have a favourite sweater and I think they are garments that kind of transcend time and space. There are certain things that you can just associate with a place. Scotland is the home of amazing knitwear that it’s produced for many centuries, so bringing the exhibition to Edinburgh was definitely a natural fit.’

Many of the show’s pieces come from an extensive private collection owned by Mark and Cleo Butterfield of C20 Vintage. ‘We’ve done quite a few exhibitions with them,’ Nothdruft explains. ‘I love other people’s collections, because there’s already a narrative that the collectors have put in and so, as a curator, to have a narrative structure to deal with is quite interesting.’ With iconic pieces by Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel, Vivienne Westwood and Comme Des Garçons on display, fashionistas will be in their element.

But by focusing on knitwear and its evolution through the decades, this exhibition also uniquely captures the zeitgeist of when each garment was made. As Nothdruft notes, ‘we can read history through objects so you can actually see what’s happening in society by looking at these pieces of clothing.’

^{Picture: Copyright CHANEL - Collection Bernstein-Grueber (Gabrielle Chanel in Biarritz, 1920)} 

The new-found freedom post-World War I, for example, is demonstrated through a collection of knitted ski and tennis wear, and Chanel’s iconic neutral-coloured striped and checked twin sets. ‘The 20s were very, very stylish,’ adds Nothdruft. ‘You can see the modernism and you can see its applications and how so many people adopted that particular style. There was a movement in the 1930s where folklore became very popular; you have the 1950s, with full skirts and little cocktail sweaters, a very different rechercheé type of femininity that came after World War II; and then you get the 1960s and a total cultural revolution.’

In a World War II ‘make do and mend’ section, pamphlets to teach women how to unravel old jumpers in order to knit new ones are on display, as well as garments made from unconventional materials such as industrial webbing. Specially commissioned contemporary pieces also feature to represent the future of knitwear, including several works by Scottish designer Di Gilpin.

‘To showcase Scottish hand knitting was very important to me and they’ve chosen a really nice cross-section of techniques that we use,’ says Gilpin, from her studio in St Andrews. ‘There are two outfits from La Fetiche, which are from autumn/winter ’22 and spring/summer ’21, and then we have a large intarsia piece [a technique used to create patterns with multiple colours] which is either going to be hung or wrapped.’

^{Hand knitted Shetland wool sweater}

Hand knitting is a key part of Gilpin’s philosophy. ‘There’s something so subtle about it and so much more refined than machine knit,’ she explains. ‘There has been a real resurgence in hand knitting over the last ten years and there are some fabulous designers and makers of wool out there. But there’s also still a lot of misogynistic attitudes towards hand knitting too: a lot of people still think that this is done by their grannies sitting in a corner by the fire.’

As co-author of The Gansey Knitting Sourcebook, Gilpin is particularly keen to bust those stereotypes with intricate and technical methods that showcase knitting as an artform. ‘The construction of Gansey is something that all designers that I’ve worked with are fascinated by. It’s not just knit two, purl two. I work to formula a huge amount, and lots of my work is sequence based. There’s a really strong maths and physics grounding in it. It’s the relationship between the hand, the needles and the yarn. These three things allow you to explore and be incredibly inventive. I really want people to see that through the exhibition, to celebrate knitting and so many fantastic designers.’

Through the display of knitwear from the Edwardian era right up to the present day, KNITWEAR: Chanel To Westwood aims to give visitors a new-found appreciation for the principles of knitting and its application in response to the world’s constantly shifting social landscapes.

‘The technique, whether it’s by machine or by hand, is a process that goes back to the beginnings of time,’ says Dennis Nothdruft. ‘And I think there is something so relatable about that in ways that a lot of other exhibitions around fashion are not.’

KNITWEAR: Chanel To Westwood, Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, Saturday 15 October–Saturday 11 March.