On Fair Isle: Graham Addinall
“To this day, I’m still waiting to be found out. I have imposter syndrome in everything I do, maybe because I didn’t have any formal training in fashion. If I thought I’d made it, I think it would be a sign that I hadn’t at all.” Graham Addinall’s varied career has seen him work as a copywriter, magazine editor, the Head of the Men’s Design Department at Birger & Mikkelsen and Paul Smith, and as a stylist for magazines such as Euroman. We spoke to him to get his take on heritage Fair Isle Knit.
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“Traditionally, Fair Isle is a knitting technique where there’s only two colors on a line in geometric repeating patterns. It comes from a tiny island in Scotland, which is the most remote in the UK.
“It started in the 19th century as a way for fisherman’s wives to use up little bits of wool and became fashionable in the 1920s when the Duke of Windsor started wearing it,”
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“Fair Isle should have high wool content, so you get that cozy warmth during winter. It’s good to play with color, but if you’ve got lots of bright colors and a bold pattern it can be a bit too much, so look for something that’s muted.
“People want to be a bit more refined while also being comfortable nowadays, and when you start thinking of refined, you start looking back at traditional ways of making clothes,”
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“If you’re young, you can wear whatever the hell you want and it’ll look good! I think Fair Isle also suits someone who’s older, but personally I’d avoid wearing it with a shirt and tie, for example, otherwise you end up looking like someone’s grandfather.
It looks great with a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Fair Isle needs to be made a little bit youthful.”
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