Heritage, the reassuring weight of the past, is a heavily promoted part of the Pringle story, but what stood out with Clare Waight Keller's latest collection was actually a subtle spirit of winning iconoclasm. Inspired by Pringle's Archive Project, she literally tore into history, cutting up heritage fabrics, such as Fair Isle and tweed, and collaging them in hybrid shapes, like a cardigan that was big enough to do double duty as a poncho. The designer chopped a feathery chevron pattern into a raccoon-fur jacket, made a fuzzy "twinset" of coat and dress by looping fur through a mohair and cashmere tweed, and, most startlingly, bonded a lace of leather onto a wool coat.
The effect was alluring, if puzzling—you weren't quite sure exactly what it was you were looking at. But Waight Keller is good at that sort of trick, at adding dimension. Her background in knitwear means she's an expert at layering different yarn weights and treatments to make clothes that look and feel new, even if they are, in fact, rooted in the past. For example, the fiery red maxi tweed patchworked into a coat was actually something from the fifties the designer had found in Pringle's archives. It was strikingly here and now. On the other hand, a tweed gilet and capelet looked there and then, until you realized the tweed was bonded to a rich brown leather, making the pieces fully reversible. Same with a herringbone bouclé also bonded onto leather. Artful and crafty.
