The doodles, spirals, loops and concentric designs on the cushions at the Todd & Duncan stand at last week's Pitti Filati pointed visitors towards the main inspiration behind the Autumn/Winter 2015-16 collection of the Loch Leven-based historical Scottish cashmere spinner.
Todd & Duncan's Creative Director Melissa Strong moved as usual from arty themes and in particular from one topic – infinity – and from a specific artist, Louise Bourgeois.
Her "Insomnia Drawings", the doodles and scribbles the artist made between November 1994 and June 1995, inspired indeed the stitch structures and colour ideas.
There was also a further arty reference: colour tones and palette combinations came from Kate McGwire's feathery sculptures that form alien-like shapes, works that helped the yarn Creative Director defining the structural aspect of a line of yarns.
The repetition patterns and textures in both Bourgeois and McGwire's works inspired shades ideal to create effects such as reiterations and repetitions in one or more colours (a reference to the repetitive elements in pencil or red/blue ink by Bourgeois) and irregular shapes.
There is also one yarn (the fifth from the left in the following picture) in a burnt red-maroon shade named after Bourgeois and meant to evoke the colour of the ink she employed for her drawings).
The light yarns that hint at McGwire's feather sculptures are useful for jacquards, frayed edges, cables, eyelets and over-stitching, or ideal to be matched with sparkling yarns and soft finishes to give the impression of feathered forms.
Scotland entered the collection with a series of yarns called "Peat", "Moorland", "Barra" and "Lothian" and characterised by somber and darker shades, a sort of haunting stillness and quietness and a graphite-like consistency.
The A/W 2015-16 collection also includes a line called "Lomond", a textured slub yarn available in a wide range of colours (3/11Nm; ideal for knitting on medium gauge 5ndle or multi-ply for 2.5ndle), while traditional Scottish textiles are referenced in "Tweedsmuir", a knop yarn with bright dots of colours (1/5Nm; knit on medium gauge 8ndle or multi-ply for 5ndle).
More vivid colours such as "Paris Green", "Blaze" and "Rebel", referred to the festive spirit of Winter, are also featured in the new collection.
Bourgeois described her doodles as "an attempt at finding a kind of peace", and, in a way, this definition perfectly describes the art of yarn making and knitting, especially in our frantic technological and digital age in a constant and desperate need for peace.
Image credits for this post:
Images 8 and 9: "Tweedsmuir" and "Lomond" yarns, Todd & Duncan A/W 2015-16 Collection. Courtesy Todd & Duncan.
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