“Fair Isle is a traditional knitting technique used to create patterns with multiple colours. It is named after Fair Isle, a tiny island in the north of Scotland, that forms part of the Shetland islands. Fair Isle knitting gained a considerable popularity when the Prince of Wales (later to become Edward VIII) wore Fair Isle tank tops in public in 1921. Traditional Fair Isle patterns have a limited palette of five or so colours, use only two colours per row, are worked in the round, and limit the length of a run of any particular colour.
Some people use
the term "Fair Isle" to refer to any colourwork knitting
where stitches are knit alternately in various colours, with the
unused colours stranded across the back of the work. Others use the
term "stranded colourwork" for the generic technique, and
reserve the term "Fair Isle" for the characteristic
patterns of the Shetland Islands.”
On
tiny Fair Isle, a cottage industry enjoys the sweet smell of success
The
Shetland island’s knitwear designers are quietly pleased at the
attention they won when Chanel was obliged to say sorry for copying
their designs
 |
Karl Lagerfeld
leads models wearing Fair Isle designs at Chanel’s Metiers d’Art
show in Rome. Photograph: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images
|
Kevin McKenna in
Shetland
Sunday 13 December
2015 00.04 GMT Last modified on Sunday 13 December 2015 00.06 GMT
On Fair Isle, the
10th-largest of Shetland’s 15 inhabited islands, the locals don’t
permit themselves to gloat even when occasion gives them reason to.
So, this weekend, there may simply be a quiet nod here and there and
some little tugs of acknowledgement that might say “well done”.
But there is no doubt that the island, home to fewer than 60 souls,
has just scored a remarkable victory, and one that may yet have huge
and beneficial consequences.
Last week Mati
Ventrillon, a craft textile designer who has lived and worked on Fair
Isle with her young family for eight years, forced an apology from
Chanel after she discovered that the French couture giant had used
some of her unique Fair Isle knitwear designs in its recent Metiers
d’Art show in Rome. She immediately took to social media to air her
grievance, asking if this was “endorsement or plagiarism?”.
Chanel acknowledged
that it had erred and issued a full apology, crediting the designs as
the creation of Fair Isle textiles specialists. What chance did a
French fashion house have when pitted against several centuries of
Scottish heritage and tradition on an island whose very name
signifies the highest quality of designer knitwear?
 |
Mati Ventrillon at
work in her studio. Photograph: Mati Ventrillon
|
Ventrillon, it
seems, is now happy to let the matter rest, but she also believes the
incident has turned a welcome spotlight on the ways of a world far
removed from the high-octane rhythms of French fashion.
“In the end some
good may come of the whole episode,” she told the Observer on
Friday afternoon, as the last glimmer of daylight disappeared across
the water on this northernmost outpost of Britain. “Not only did
they issue an appropriate apology and correction, they also carried
an article about the history of craft textiles and knitwear on Fair
Isle, and the skill and dedication that have been handed down through
generations of women. Millions of people might now become aware of
what it is we do here, and how much it helps to sustain this place.”
A genuine patterned
Fair Isle jumper is considered an authentic work of art. These
garments will take, on average, more than 100 hours each to hand-knit
– and that’s before you factor in the time spent on designing
them. This is an intricate and highly skilled process, involving
arranging the traditional patterns and the five colours that
typically characterise these threads.
It took Ventrillon
more than four years to study and practise the techniques and
patterns that were first used by the women of Fair Isle and the wider
Shetland islands two centuries ago. Her desire is to eventually
establish an industry on Fair Isle that will offer products to all
parts of the market, rather than just to the luxury goods sector,
with its bespoke online customer base. “In this way, I will be able
to offer to islanders training and employment that is both
sustainable and organic.”
Wool and knitted
textiles are enjoying something of a renaissance in the world of high
fashion. Perhaps that’s what led Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel
researchers to this tiny hothouse of textile creativity in the first
place. But while wool and garments made from it have been a staple on
Fair Isle for generations, a group of edgy knitwear companies in
London – with names such as Unmade and Wool and the Gang – are
turning the traditional model of purchasing fashion products on its
head. Using computer programming, online technology and the power of
crowdfunding, these cutting-edge collectives are using wool – that
most traditional of yarns, often associated with dozing grandmothers
in rocking chairs – to challenge the accepted economic rules of
fashion retailing.
Ben Alun-Jones, one
of the co-founders of Unmade, reflected last month on estimates that
10% of all the clothes being made in the world go straight to
landfill, which is, he says insane.
“We seem to have
lost something in mass production, where you are making things for
everyone, but everything is made for no one,” he said.
Wool and the Gang,
meanwhile, has a global battalion of 3,000, mainly female, casual
knitters, who use the company as an agency to supplement their
incomes.
On Fair Isle,
Ventrillon sustains a lifestyle that marries the wisdom and
craftsmanship of the ages with online technology. “I have a waiting
list of online orders that is 18 months long, and so I have had to
close it,” she said. “My customers interact with me at every
stage of the creation, right through to the design. They know that
they are getting a genuine garment made entirely on Fair Isle, in a
process that uses our unique patterns and techniques but allows them
to play a part in the crafting.
“I don’t buy
into the concept that big global fashion house equals bad, and small
traditional craft-making equals good. There are many opportunities
for mutual beneficial partnerships between the big houses and small
community-based enterprises.”
Elizabeth Riddiford
of Exclusively Fair Isle is one of three commercial hand-knitters on
the island. “I have been a Fair Isle hand-knitter and hand-spinner
since moving here more than 30 years ago.
“I learned the
intricate patterns and techniques of real Fair Isle knitting from
experienced local Fair Islanders who were all born on the island in
the early 1900s and who, along with their sisters and cousins, had
been taught to hand-knit by their mothers and grandmothers from when
they were toddlers,” she said.
“The tradition of
Fair Isle hand-knitting is still practised and passed on by mothers,
grandmothers and great-grandmothers to their daughters on Fair Isle
today, although nowadays this is mostly for the pleasure of knitting
for family members and friends.”
Earlier on Friday,
Ventrillon had other duties to attend to. Another thing that knits
this tiny population together is its community spirit. So she has
trained as a firefighter and forms part of the team that daily
attends to the island’s airport.
“In this place,”
she said, “helping each other is a duty – and a pleasure which
stitches us all together.”
Two Photographs of myself wearing “Fair Island“ which are circulating in the Internet
JEEVES / TWEEDLAND
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