After nearly two years as design director, Fran Stringer is getting attuned to the rhythm of this Pringle of Scotland yarn. She said, “As I do every season, I returned to the archive: Sorry! Seriously, though, I’m very spoiled and so lucky that the archive is so rich and full of inspiration.” This Pre-Fall’s ignition was sparked by Alistair O’Neill’s observation at last year’s 200th anniversary exhibition of Pringle’s heritage, “Fully Fashioned,” that the brand had been a key mover in transitioning womenswear during the Great War. As he said, “Going through surviving copies of British Vogue from 1918 to 1919, I found editorials that said women had gotten used to wearing their husbands’ cardigans as part of the war effort, and they were not willing to give them up.”
That switch from corsets to cardigans is an inspiring heritage story to parlay into a rapidly changing today, and Stringer did so sweetly, with a progressive collection inflected by a make-do attitude and that ever-going warp and weft between conventionally masculine and feminine detail. Patched sweaters made up of different but complementary panels of rib, plain, and cable knit with the occasional island of argyle were meant to evoke a feeling of darning and homemade, while the mismatched vintage-looking buttons on one of the many oversize cardigans in the collection was an endearingly anti-industrial embellishment. Military-looking garments were afforded feminine touches, such as the knit-frill detail at the neckline of an olive ribbed submariner’s turtleneck or the peplum at the waistline of a similarly martial sweater. Not-in-the-lookbook pieces worth highlighting included shirting and knits in a lovely floral licensed by Stringer and her team from the estate of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
