Northern Ireland fashion designer’s knitting revolution hits TV screens

News Letter

For a long time, knitting was seen as something only grannies did.  But young Northern Ireland fashion designer Hope Macaulay is reviving this traditional craft for the modern society. Her colourful chunky handmade knitwear, mostly made without needles, exploded onto the fashion scene in 2020 after going viral online. Her pieces have since been worn by celebrities worldwide and featured in top fashion magazines.  But what makes the business so special is Hope’s dedicated team of 20 home knitters across Northern Ireland who are on hand to bring her colourful designs to life. Recently Hope, who was named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Retail and E-commerce last year, made her biggest move yet - opening her first ever pop-up shop in Los Angeles. Revealed in a new True North BBC documentary entitled ‘The Social Knitwork’, Hope and her team base in Coleraine offer a behind-the-scenes look at her ‘close-knit family’ as the team works towards the Hollywood launch revealing more about what makes the Portstewart entrepreneur so ‘yarn-tastic’.

Transcript

00:00Hey everyone, it's Hope here. I wanted to take you along behind the scenes to meet some

00:09of the amazing women who make up my team of local knitters here in Northern Ireland. It

00:14all started with just me, but over the years we've grown into a team of 20 skilled knitters

00:18that I've hired and each week they work from home knitting our iconic cardigans and bringing

00:23orders to life. Some knitters like Karen have been with me from the very beginning, which

00:27is nearly four years now. There's Claire, our youngest knitter, and Katie, who's our

00:33most recent addition to the team. I personally trained each of my knitters in my signature

00:38Colossal Knit technique. Every few months we would host knitter workshops like this,

00:43so we all come together, chat, and of course knit. Then there's my mum, who is our knitter

00:49coordinator. She picks up the wool from the studio every Monday and spends the rest of

00:53the week driving all over Northern Ireland, delivering the supplies to each of the knitters'

00:57homes and collecting your knitter pieces. I am so incredibly lucky to have such a strong

01:03team of talented women and I'm so immensely proud that my designs are all handmade here

01:08in my home of Northern Ireland, which helps keep the traditional crafts alive in a more

01:14modern way. Let me know if you'd like to learn more about our team. Thanks for watching!

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