Cracking good yarns: the rise and rise of Scottish knitwear

England might be having an identity crisis, but Scotland is currently basking in the cultural sun. Fashion’s love affair with the Highlands is seeing designers lean into its heritage as well as a burgeoning crop of homegrown talent finding fast favour.

With customers increasingly questioning provenance and quality, brands are plying rich cultural hooks for authenticity and heft. Which means this year you’re going to see a lot of plaids, tartans, intricately spun knits upon knits and myriad iterations of kilts.

At McQueen, Seán McGirr has positioned its founder’s MacQueen tartan front and centre, running it over mini dresses, handbags and country-flexed jackets paired with Argyll motif knitwear. Similarly, Burberry has cemented its overt, checkered British identity as part of its core turnaround plan, with its Johnston of Elgin 30-stage-creation cashmere scarves (a 120-year partnership) a key hero piece driving the brand’s renewed vigour (searches for its signature Nova iteration on search engine Lyst increased 307% in the final quarter of 2025). At Cumbernauld-raised Charles Jeffrey’s most recent Paris show for his Loverboy label, entitled “Thistle” he took a modern-punk attitude to Scottish romanticism; tartan puffers, oversized trousers and rara skirts abounded.

JW Anderson has recently launched a new collaboration with Pringle, turning out vibrant statement-making Argyll knits, alongside a partnership with Lochcarron for tartan kilts and tailoring. At Patrick Grant’s Community Clothing, its classic crew-neck, £79, Shetland jumper (woven in Hawick) has a 1,000-strong waiting list.

There are serious homegrown businesses operating, too. Strathberry, launched in 2013 by husband and wife team Leeanne and Guy Hundleby with the duo packing and sending out their bags by themselves, is on course to hit £50m in revenue this year, up 35%.

Its marriage of style and fair pricing (its popular Mosaic bag is £495) has supercharged its business in a saturated, highly expensive handbag market. Designed in its Edinburgh townhouse atelier, Leeanne Hundleby says, “We are very much rooted in this heartfelt luxury. Exceptional craftsmanship is what the brand is built upon.” Its biggest market is the US where the Scottish USP “really resonates. People feel that warmth, that’s helped us fly the Scottish flag on a global scale.”

Caledonia and fashion have long intertwined. When Vivienne Westwood traveled to the Hebrides to order Harris Tweed, she apparently complained if the weather wasn’t dramatic enough. But then, that synthesis between landscape and craft, from the rugged colours to the soft hardiness of the yarn is key, as is the depth of high-skill, community and collaboration.

Johnstons of Elgin, which still operates out of its original 1797 mill buildings in Elgin and Hawick, under the direction of Angela Bell has steadily become more fashion focused. Its spring summer collection plies into modern Scottish history, inspired by the late abstract artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. Chris Gaffney, CEO, says “There’s a real hunger for authentic luxury, and a deeper need to understand how things are made, where they're made, who's making them, and what the history is.”

Last year, the company invested in a new cutting-edge £850,000 warping machine, which also saw them extend their space to include another 50 knitters. In response to the decline of textile training colleges, Johnstons has its own apprenticeship programme with accredited qualifications. “Schools are recognising that it isn't just about sending people off to university. There's good careers that can be had with trades,” says Gaffney.

Johnstons of Elgin’s recent collaboration with Le Kilt, the brand helmed by Samantha McCoach, was worn by the Princess of Wales on a recent visit to Radical Weavers workshop in Stirling. McCoach has become a go-to for modern kilt fans, and worked with Christian Dior when the French house staged its 2024 cruise collection in the Italianate gardens of 15th-century Drummond Castle. That show was an homage to Monsieur Dior’s affinity for Scotland, who showed his collections in Edinburgh and at Gleneagles Hotel in 1955, and utilised Scottish tweeds and cashmere in his collections. His contemporaries also found creative vitality in the country. Gabrielle Chanel fell in love on salmon fishing trips in the Highlands with the Duke of Westminster in the 1920s, taking inspiration from his classic country tweeds. A century later, Chanel’s new designer Matthieu Blazy has continued in the tradition using Barrie cashmere (the Hawick-based supplier acquired by Chanel in 2012). Her so-called nemesis, Elsa Schiaparelli, equally found inspiration there, using tartans, tweeds and Scottish wools in her collections.

When the Fife Arms (owned by the art dealers Iwan Wirth and Manuela Hauser) opened in 2019 it not only put Braemar on the list of buzziest destinations for boutique stays, it reignited the connection with Schiaparelli, who would visit her friend, Harper’s Bazaar editor Frances Farquharson at nearby Invercauld Castle. Its bar is named after the designer, and since 2024 has held an annual fashion festival. At November’s event, ex Givenchy and creative director of Uniqlo Clare Waight Keller, Erdem Moralioğlu and Emilia Wickstead appeared. Neatly, the V&A’s upcoming exhibition on Schiaparelli will feature Farquharson’s pieces made by Elsa, which she wore with dramatic abandon around the castle.

At its sister site in Dundee, the V&A is becoming increasingly ambitious (tourism to the area is up by 54% since opening in 2017). “There's something happening here that we want to sustain and keep that energy going,” says Leonie Bell, the museum’s director. This spring it will stage Catwalk: The Art of the Catwalk show, which will chronologically document the history of spectator fashion as well as the role Scotland and its designers have played from Westwood, Chanel (including the architectural model from its 2012 show at Lithgow Palace) and Dior to Christopher Kane, Louise Gray and Pam Hogg.

Bell cites the brands which are forging ahead a new story for Scottish fashion, too, including Nicholas Daley, Siobhan Mackenzie, Iseabal Hendry and La Fetiche. “There’s a new generation who are looking at what's close at hand and underfoot in terms of their environment and how they're exploring the materiality of what they're trying to achieve.”

Cool, contemporary inflected knitwear brands abound. &Daughter has marked over 10 years of dressing fashion editors in its perfectly cut knits, while fledgling Amsterdam based Scottish made Clòimh’s colour-pop pieces are gaining traction.

April Crichton launched La Fetiche in 2017 with Orély Forestier; the two designers met working at Sonia Rykiel, where Crichton was Rykiel’s right hand for 20 years. Their whimsically striking brand with signature colour-inflected knits is an insider favourite and extension of the longstanding French-Scottish fashion synergy (Forestier is Parisian). They work with local knitters and makers from the surrounding Glaswegian area, including Di Gilpin and Hilary Keyes. “Many younger alumni from Glasgow School of Art are setting up their own small enterprises. A girl I work with is based in Irvine, she’s buying new machinery and we’re able to create more design-led, experimental pieces,” says Crichton, adding “everything we do, has a reason for it being there. We love fashion and getting dressed, it drives everything. Learning about who’s made it and why and what they’ve used feels important.”

It’s this spirit of modernity which is behind Bard in Leith, a store-meets-gallery set up by husband-duo Hugo Macdonald (a design journalist) and James Stevens (an architect) in 2022. “Craft suffers from this assumption that it's all about saving heritage and it’s earnest and brown and a bit boring and it's our duty to preserve it” says Macdonald. “There's a lot of people taking craft into the future and using heritage tools in interesting ways showing that craft is dynamic, innovative and exciting.” Among others, Bard stocks Begg & Co, Iseabel Hendry sporran leather bags and Wobbly Digital by Soorin Shin, “a Korean graduate from the Glasgow School of Art who 3D prints with plastic in what she describes as an eco-feminist practice” says Macdonald. “She makes kilt pins that historically would have been emblems of war, she’s making them into objects of nature, fish and butterflies. Bard’s mission is to show what Scotland does at global quality, and turn people's ideas of Scottishness on its head.”

It would be remiss to not mention The Traitors effect on propelling Scots-style into focus. Claudia Winkleman’s modern Lady Macbeth Celtic-goth wardrobe has been cited as one of the most influential shopping levers for women in the UK. But, in January it was the Isle of Lewis’s Stephen Libby’s commitment to jumpsuits and Matthew Hyndman’s Shetland Woollen Co knitwear which really stole the show. Hyndman, who lives in Edinburgh, is a friend to the Bard founders, who stock his thirst-trap jumpers (which he has modelled for them). They also carry the creative director's photography, from a project where he shot himself naked doing handstands in the country's dramatic landscapes. “He's amazing,” says Macdonald. “We felt very proud of him.”

Where next for the Celtic fashion moment? America’s World Cup is calling. “I’m not saying the Tartan Army is a fashion crowd,” laughs Leonie Bell, “but street culture has always had a big influence on Scotland’s fashion. There’s a romance to it. People have different ideas of what Scotland is, and you choose to wear your bit of it.”

Top picture: Jason Faulkner, 40, Ex-British Army soldier. Jason is a bagpiper who represented his regiment as a member of the Highlanders Pipes and Drums for over two decades. He wears Sanquhar handknit by Connolly.

Fashion assistant, production and casting by Sam Deaman; photographer’s assistant Joe Smith