Fashion Knitwear Design

CHAPTER 1

HISTORY AND CONTEXT

by Cathy Challender

Introduction

In order to fully appreciate the context in which fashion knitwear is designed, manufactured, sold and worn today, it is important to gain an understanding of the history of the industry. The role of the fashion knitwear designer, the range of technologies used to produce knitted garments, the traditional styles that are referenced time after time: all can be traced back through centuries of expertise and innovation.

This page from a ledger dated 1859 presents silk warp-knitted samples and manufacturing notes. It is thought to have belonged to Ball and Co., a warp-knitting manufacturer operating in Ilkeston and Nottingham.

This chapter provides an overview of the development of knitting and knitwear, from a medieval craft to contemporary practices, via the seismic shifts of the Industrial Revolution. It explores technological developments, from the stocking frame to today's machines capable of seamless knitting, and outlines the different strands of the industry that have been created along the way. We will consider the changes in fashion that drove these technological changes, the iconic styles that have emerged and the influential designers who have pushed the boundaries of fashion knitwear over the years. The chapter concludes with an examination of hobby knitting, tracking hand knitting from a respectable Victorian pastime through to a newly reinvigorated twenty-first-century leisure pursuit.

The early industry

Although hand knitting is now primarily known as a hobby activity, it was once a common source of income across Britain and beyond. The practice gradually disappeared with the introduction of the knitting frame, which dramatically speeded up production. This first machine, invented in 1589 to produce fashionable stockings, laid the foundations for today's technology.

Hand knitting

While the origins of hand knitting are not known, it is certain that the craft is relatively recent in comparison to weaving, which is believed to date back to Palaeolithic times. The earliest examples of hand knitting are fragments of a stocking, discovered in Egypt, dating from the tenth century ad, that display evidence of knitting being a well-established technique. Although we can only speculate about the development of knitting up to this point, earlier archaeological finds provide clues about potential influences. Socks, mittens and head coverings made by using nalbinding - a technique that produces a sturdy fabric that resembles knitting but is made in a different way, by using short lengths of yarn and one flat needle - date from the fourth or fifth century ad onwards.

While the Egyptian stocking proves that knitting would have been practised during medieval times, further evidence is frustratingly scarce. Most agree that knitting originated in the Middle East, spreading via trade and colonization to Europe and the Americas. Requiring no heavy equipment, the craft was easily portable. The types of articles made through knitting at this time would have been diverse, but understandably it is the most precious items, such as liturgical gloves, that have survived. A series of paintings known as Knitting Madonna, from the fourteenth century, show garments being knitted as a seamless tube on four needles, indicating the technique being used and suggesting an important and established industry.

The British seem to have taken readily to hand knitting. The established woollen industry supplied raw material, and the craft became an important source of income in the medieval period. British craftspeople gained a reputation for supplying superior-quality woollen caps and then stockings to Europe and the American colonies. The first knitting guilds were founded in Europe during the thirteenth century, growing in importance during the sixteenth century. These powerful organizations controlled the trade, enforcing standards and rules. The master knitters of the guilds were an elite who travelled, became educated in foreign knitting techniques and were closely allied to the fullers and wool merchants. Qualification as a master required the production of a cap, stockings, a vest and finally a highly complex patterned blanket. When the demand for knitted caps waned, several acts of parliament were passed to protect the knitters' interests; one enforced the wearing of a woollen knitted cap on Sundays and holidays. Known as The Statute of Servants because the rich were exempt from adhering to it, the act was unpopular and had only limited success.

Fig. 1.1 This pair of woollen socks, made in Egypt in the fourth or fifth century, was constructed by using nalbinding, a knotless netting technique that predates true knitting. © VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM

During the sixteenth century, an emerging men's fashion for very short breeches placed an emphasis on the leg. Stockings had previously been made of woven cloth; the elastic properties of hand-knitted stockings made them much more suitable for wear. Paintings from the period show the prominence of the stocking in the royal court, particularly for men. Stockings became increasingly splendid for those who could afford them, with the finest examples being imported at great cost from Spain or Italy. Less is known about women's stockings at this time; propriety forbade even the mention of women's legs or the stockings that women wore. Similarly, little is known about the highly refined silk and wool undershirts that were produced during the seventeenth century. A rare exception is a gory account of the knitted shirt supposedly worn by King Charles I at his execution in 1649. This 'ghastly relic' was described as a shirt of great perfection, no doubt the work of a master knitter.

Fig. 1.2 During medieval and Renaissance times, the knitting of woollen caps, such as those illustrated, was an important industry in Britain. The process of capping involved the knitting and felting (fulling) of caps to make them weatherproof; they were then shorn, to give a smooth appearance to the fabric.

The elite knitters were a minority, located in the European textiles centres or close to the royal courts. In most regions, the craft was practised as a necessary part-time supplement to other forms of income such as farming or fishing. Hand knitting was encouraged to allow the rural poor to be self-sufficient; to facilitate this, a number of knitting schools had been established in England and continental Europe as early as the sixteenth century. Yet, in reality, knitting provided only a meagre existence for the vast majority of knitters. By the eighteenth century, when stockings produced more quickly and cheaply by machine had begun to overtake the market, hand knitting remained in rural or coastal areas only, where knitting could still supplement incomes from crofting or fishing. The production of Guernsey frocks, a type of working garment adopted by sailors and fishermen from the nineteenth century onwards, provided work for hand knitters. Although the regional patterns for a fisherman's sturdy, hand-knitted gansey could be elaborate, the knitting of ganseys was not a lucrative activity. The decline continued; by the middle of the nineteenth century, with the notable exception of the knitting performed by the knitters of the Shetland Islands, hand knitting as an industry was permanently diminished.

The stocking frame

The stocking frame, or hand frame, regarded by many as one of the most important inventions of the Renaissance, was invented in 1589, when the fashion for knitted stockings was at its height. Its inventor, Reverend William Lee of Calverton in Nottinghamshire, had aimed to create a machine that would enable him to emulate a hand-knitted stocking. He combined the shape of the upright weaving loom with an entirely new way of making the loops that form a knitted fabric. This method used a row of 'bearded' needles arranged horizontally, with one end of each needle fixed into a needle bed; rather than each stitch being worked individually, as in hand knitting, all of the needles formed loops simultaneously. This technology dramatically speeded up the process of knitting, far beyond the capacity of even the swiftest hand knitter.

Fig. 1.3 A portrait of Richard Sackville, Earl of Dorset, painted by William Larkin in 1613. Sackville, known for his lavish lifestyle and extravagant wardrobe, is depicted wearing hand-knitted silk stockings that are embellished at the ankles.

Fig. 1.4 This representation of a spring bearded needle from a Lee stocking frame (hand frame) depicts the needle's three important parts: the shank upon which the old loop was formed; the beard, which retains the new loop and enables the old one to pass off; and the eye, which receives the end of the beard.

Lee's first stockings were made of wool, knitted at a relatively coarse gauge equivalent to today's 8 gauge knitting machines. Despite the inventive brilliance of the machine, Queen Elizabeth I denied Lee a patent because she felt that his invention would harm the livelihoods of British hand knitters. She indicated that, if Lee's machine could knit silk stockings to compete with foreign imports, his request would be viewed more favourably. With help from skilled French artisans, Lee achieved this task: by 1599, his frame could knit silk stockings and waistcoats. Still denied support from the English court, he relocated to Rouen, a centre for textiles in France. He hoped for more...