Having previously shown in Milan, Pringle of Scotland has been brought back to Britain for London fashion week's 25th anniversary by its new American CEO, Mary-Adair Macaire. It seems entirely logical—the company is, of course, a Scottish one. To mark the occasion, she and the designer, Clare Waight Keller, threw a dinner at the Saatchi Gallery after the runway show. Much will be written about that, and the fact that Tilda Swinton had been asked by Pringle to make a movie with Ryan McGinley in which she roams a Scottish castle, barefoot in evening gowns.
But what about the clothes? Waight Keller went all out to remind the audience that Pringle is a knitwear firm. Sound policy, but what does a knit collection look like for Spring? The answer was a mixture of chunky, open cable-knit cardigans; fine-gauge fit-and-flare dresses; and a development of the multilevel ruffled short skirt that's cropping up in a lot of places this season. Waight Keller kept color to a minimum, using white, gray, and lemon. At the end, two versions of the "Tilda" dress—long, satin, with complex straps crossing a bare back—came out. Swinton, meanwhile, was wearing a white tuxedo and silver foil T-shirt from the men's line for the evening.
