#inismeain

Todd Snyder kicked off their "Big Sale” on New Year’s Day, offering an extra 30% off sale merchandise with code BIG30.

To me, these cashmere donegal sweaters are the highlight of the sale ($195.30, from $398). I like the visual interest of donegal speckling, as well as thoughtful design details like fully-fashioned side seams and saddle shoulders. For something more affordable, consider the saddle shoulder alpaca blend crews, or the fully-fashioned Italian merino waffle crewnecks ($97.30, from $198).

At Inis Meáin Knitting Company design meetings happen every couple of weeks. The design work largely falls to the Technical Designer whose job it is to bring concepts to a technical knitting reality. However, we interns are also encouraged to contribute whatever ideas we might have, as long as our inspiration is drawn from the landscape of the island around us.

Attending these meetings was incredibly valuable and informative. I was able to see sale numbers from previous seasons and knowing what was successful or unsuccessful informs the next collection. There are two main deadlines for the company to have all design work and resulting samples complete - the Pitti Uomo A/W trade show in January and the S/S trade show in June. Sometimes I contributed technical drawings in these meetings with new menswear ideas but mostly I brought in photographs I had taken on the island as these are how the team decide their yarn colours for the next season. The best selling colours are always variations of navy or grey but still they include some fantastic brights in their colour range as these are what help their pieces stand out from the crowd at the trade show. Nothing is really drawn up beforehand, if an idea is suggested it is made into a full garment and is tweaked at this stage or simply discarded. Even though it mean’t more work in the long term, we were happy to see the discarded garments as we sometimes got to take them home!

Below are some examples of the photographs I submitted, I felt all these images provided great colour and texture references that could translate well into Inis Meáin knitwear.

The west coast of Ireland is famous for it’s dry stone walls. Here are some of the stunning walls of Inis Meain. Every day I am surrounded by these limestone creations - sometimes they feel like gorgeous island guides and sometimes they feel like offensive barricades.