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.
“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,”
“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,”
“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.”