The designer talks a love affair with textiles and the future of Fair Isle weaving

Interview: Cheryl Caira. Photography by Brian Sweeney

Lynne Coleman remembers the moment she fell for the wool that would become the intrinsic fibre of her creative life. It was a black Ralph Lauren cashmere jumper – likely part of a twin set – that she’d pulled from a rail in a second-hand shop in Edinburgh, during her first year at university. That tactile experience stayed with her. “When I held it, I knew it was different. It looks and feels and behaves like wool, but it just doesn’t have the same handle.”

Now a designer, author and go-to fashion expert, Coleman has spent the past two decades beautifully entangled in the textiles industry, with the luxuriously soft and coveted down – acquired from cashmere goats in the coldest corners of the Mongolian mountains – a personal favourite. 

The last few years have seen Coleman in pursuit of creating the first ever commercially produced, 100% Scottish cashmere Fair Isle and Guernsey knits – a marriage made in British textiles heaven. She relocated to Guernsey with her family four years ago, the ruggedly beautiful island where Victor Hugo wrote Les Misérables in exile, and played host to  Renoir painting its sea-carved cliffs some 140 years ago.

It was important to Coleman that her designs, a capsule collection of five pieces, were crafted in the places they originated. The ‘Cashmere Guernsey’ for example – with 16th century knitting roots – takes a journey up and down the country to reach its final stylish, hardy and timelessly wearable form. Knitted on Guernsey with yarn sourced from Todd & Duncan on the banks of Loch Leven, it heads to Scotland to be finished in Hawick, before returning to the Channel Island.

“Scotland’s water is just really soft, whereas the water down south is very hard. That difference alone is another huge singing point for me – that’s why our product is the way that it is. We’ve lucked out geographically, and it makes our textiles really special.”

The repute of the Fair Isle knitting tradition has always fascinated her. The 10-ply Fair Isle jumper in her collection is knitted exclusively on the island, following centuries-old traditional motifs. “It transpires that the women who were knitting would trade them with the merchant seamen who were going up and down the Channel and North Sea. That’s how they would feed their families, and that’s how these jumpers became internationally famous. It blows my mind.” 

The daughter of a merchant seaman, the tide has brought Coleman to a day-to-day of cold water swims, and a collection with maritime history at its core. Another of her cashmere pieces, the Hooded Yacht Wrap, is a celebration of her nautical past (she learned to sail aged 15 when she was offered a place in a Tall Ships Race from St Malo to Lerwick). It’s a combination of two of the bestsellers in her inaugural collection: the cashmere hoodie and wrap cardigan. 

Safeguarding heritage, spotlighting provenance and continuing a highly skilled legacy are what spur the designer to continue weaving tradition with reinvention. “There’s now only five women on Fair Isle with the technique to knit that pattern. For me, preserving this is of national importance across the whole of the British Isles. We have these little pockets of textile excellence, which could vanish in a heartbeat – that the rest of the world is obsessed with. I sound like a kind of mad Batman, but I feel like if I don’t do something, this knowledge could disappear. Even if I only have 21 jumpers coming out of Fair Isle, it’s still enough for me to be able to tell the world that this is really important.”

Coleman already has a waiting list for the range, which launches in the autumn. “This feels like it’s much bigger than the label. This isn’t just a fashion thing. These are little pieces of heritage and history.”

Go to lynnecoleman.com for more info on L Y N N E: The Collection