Vintage knitting pattern

Cleo has always loved fairisle sweaters. The exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum starts off with a fairisle pullover that she knitted from a late 1930s pattern when she was a teenager in 1963. Since then she's collected loads of them and when we came to choose which ones to put in the exhibition we had them spread out all over our kitchen floor. Seeing them en masse, a riot of colour and patterns, we instantly knew that that was how they should be displayed in the show. Beth Ojari, from the F&TM turned that idea into the fairisle wall that appears in the show.  

The fairisle jumper is the knitted sweater for us. It's a style that seems to be ever popular and fashionable. And its thanks to one of briefest reigning monarchs that the style's popularity spread from its beginnings on a tiny Scottish island in the Shetlands.

The Duke of Windsor, the future king Edward VIII, wrote in his book A Family Album  “I suppose the most showy of all my garments was the multicoloured Fair Isle sweater with its jigsaw pattern, which I wore for the first time while playing myself as Captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club at St Andrews in 1922.”   

The canny Fair Islanders had sent the sweater to the Duke who at the time was widely considered to be one of the best dressed men in Europe. The fashionable Duke’s sartorial style led to an enormous demand for Fair Isle sweaters which in turn meant a huge increase in the production of the hand knitted garments by the Shetland Islanders. 

Originally found only on the small Scottish island between Orkney and Shetland, Fair Isle patterned socks, stockings and gloves were made by women and men to supplement fishing and farming income. Pattern were first published by two of the islanders in 1927 and during the 1930s the fairisle became a handknit challenge that many women took on.

In the late 1960s the counter culture movement sparked a nostalgic interest in the clothes from previous decades. Paul McCartney wore a fairisle pullover in the Beatles 1967 TV film “Magical Mystery Tour”.  This fashion grew to its height in the early 1970s when the fairisle became a must have in every stylish mans wardrobe.

Pete Townsend in the studio wearing his fairisle. 

Ossie Clark wearing his fairisle in his studio in the 70s.

Just a suggestion (my opinion)

Plimsolls and cardigans/fairisles