Nicole Leybourne taught herself to knit from YouTube tutorials, after falling in love with a yellow fluffy jumper she spotted in a boutique and couldn't stop thinking about. Her first attempt was a black jumper, unwearable, its pieces never properly sewn together. She kept going anyway.
What followed nobody predicted, including Nicole. Picked up by Net-A-Porter and collaborating with Karen Walker and Anthropologie, her oversized, saturated, sculptural knits developed a following that regularly sells out before most people have had the chance to decide. She describes the process of building the brand as still slightly unbelievable to her.
Each piece is designed by Nicole in New Zealand and handcrafted by a devoted team of knitters in Peru, working with natural fibres including merino, alpaca and mohair sourced from Peru and New Zealand respectively. The range is made to order in small quantities, limited by nature and genuinely considered in everything from fibre to finish.
The Knitter is built on the belief that handmade clothing carries something that no production line can replicate, the particular quality of something made slowly, by human hands, with real care.
