In September 2018, Hope Macaulay from Portstewart on the Antrim coast, freshly graduated from Rochester’s creative arts course, showcased her graduate collection at Fashion Week in London. With its vibrant, overblown chunky knits, ideas for the collection were gathered from a trip to Rome that added to her research on surrealist painters. Three months later, we cited her as one to watch in the Irish Times Magazine. In the New York Times last year, she was named as one of seven designers in the world breathing new life into an age-old craft, making knitwear cool again.
Her exuberant knits in vivid chromatic shades made by hand, sometimes without needles, in supersize yarns seem to have touched a chord during the pandemic. “My brand just blew up in 2020 during lockdown,” she says. Her collaborations with influencers and posts on Instagram (where she now has 237,000 followers) drew attention to her work, including interest from Anthropologie in the United States. But when the supermodel Gigi Hadid was photographed wearing a Macaulay cardigan coming out of a supermarket and was featured on the cover of GQ in a Macaulay knit, her business exploded.
Awareness of her work was raised in Asia when Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka became another fan. Macaulay knits are now stocked in three shops in Japan and one in Korea, and there are plans for further expansion in Asia.
From producing everything by hand on her own, she now has 15 knitters based around Northern Ireland and five in her studio, and the dynamism in her knits shows no sign of abating. Her garments have been featured in Vogue, Elle, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated and Harper’s Bazaar. Her current collection, which she calls Dopamine Knits, is all about “how colours and textures have psychological associations and can boost the mood”, she says. Her signature Colossal Knit jacket with its colour blocking and balloon cuffed sleeves is created from sustainably sourced materials — luxury merino and vegan biodegradable nylon, though she would love to work with Irish wool.
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That sense of colour harmonies pervades everything she makes. “I am quite picky about my colour combinations, and I love Italy. Whenever I see a building there with different colour combinations, I take notes, but it also comes down to something instinctive.” Creativity runs in the family; her mother Lesley Macaulay, a former fashion stylist, has been an inspiration for her work, and her father Tony is a well-known author and broadcaster. But it was her grandmother, Margaret Evans, who taught her to knit and instilled a love of the craft that has now earned her a well-deserved reputation for innovation.
This season she has used patchwork stitching on her signature asymmetric colour blocking designs, introduced totes, miniskirts, cardigans with oversized collars and chunky patchwork trousers, as well as an all-black look for the first time. “What we wear reflects what we feel. People need to feel and touch the pieces. And I am so proud that they are all made in Northern Ireland.”
Prices from £30/€35, hopemacaulay.com
Photography: Scarlett Casciello; hair: Natalie Shafi; make-up: Grace Ellington; model: Moyu from Gee Small Faces
