'Knitwear: Chanel to Westwood', Fashion and Textile Museum, London

摘要

This fascinating and instructive exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum presented highlights from an extensive private collection of knitwear, on show to the public for the first time. Over 150 pieces, collected by Cleo and Mark Butterfield, provided valuable insights for those interested in the history of knitting and its role in twentieth-century fashion. Cleo Butterfield's interest in knitting was sparked when, in the early 1960s, she used a 1930s pattern to knit a Fair Isle jumper. This jumper, alongside the pattern, opened the show, opposite some examples of functional Edwardian knitwear. In the next case was a c. 1918 suit attributed to Chanel, marking the point at which knitwear began to be used for fashionable outerwear. This transformation of material from utilitarian to chic was one of the stories of the exhibition, as too was the breadth of the range of knitwear, encompassing highly technical industrial fabric and the works of the domestic hand knitter.