Knitwear Review. London Fashion Week, Fall/Winter 2017.

Knitting InspirationKnitwear Review Fashio...

Feb 27

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Happy Monday! I hope you had a wonderful weekend and ready to start a new week! Today I continue to share with you knitwear pieces that appeared in new F/W '17 collections. This time we "travel" to London. I was interested to see what designers might come up with, as London is famous for its diverse culture. To my surprise there were not that many knit items in each collection as you might expect for cold season, but I managed to find some to show you here.Basics. Many designers preferred to keep it simple and don't experiment. As a result there were a lot of basic knits that are easy to knit and wear. I think we, sweater knitters, all have/had at least one such piece on the needles - classic shape, easy stitches and simple colors.A little bit more color from Jasper Conran. I am in love with the striped sweater. It looks so cozy and soft! Perfect for simple jeans and long walks. I especially like the stripe sequence - this is my weakest side in knitting and I am always interested to see how others play with colors.Eudon Choi showed big chunky sweaters (looks like they are knit in fisherman's rib) in simple earthly shades. The detail that attracted my attention is the neckline - something between classic crew neck and turtle neck.Color. I've found some interesting interpretations of the colorwork in several shows.House of Holland and Huishan Zhang used graphic motifs and intarsia. The black-and-white sweater knit in angora or mohair looks pretty striking - such a sharp contrast. If we look closely on Zhang's cardigan and sweater, we could notice that after the pieces were knit, each diamond's contour is stitched with contrasting color - quiet interesting visual effect.

Three ways to work with color by Teatum Jones and Joseph:

Stripes - sweater is knit in horizontal ribbing stripes with the contrasting thinner year running between rows.
Intarsia - pretty impressive and very hard to execute color work! But it offers so many possibilities!
Color blocking - cable sweater is "cut" in two pieces by contrasting colors. This is a great idea if you don't have enough yarn for the whole sweater. I also thought it might look good with gradient effect.

Extravagance. As usual, there are extravagant and over-the-board pieces to be found - designers usually use them to create an image/mood for the show and demonstrate the materials and stitches. What usually happens is that after the show the designers leave just some details from the piece (stitch pattern/colorwork/etc) to produce more wearable items based on these extravagant show samples.

Ports 1961 and Joseph used super chunky yarns and extremely oversize shapes.

Fashion East threw on a real textile show! They mixed colors, different yarns, shapes to expand textile/knit boundaries and see what can be done with yarn. Though none of these pieces is wearable, they still remind that the knit/crochet stitches are so diverse and can be turned into anything your imagination allows!Asymmetry. Burberry showed asymmetrical/multiple layers cable sweaters in neutral shades. Cables "run" in different directions mixing in with different stitch patterns. This effect can be achieved by knitting several pieces and seaming them afterwords, like the patchwork/quilt technique.