A vibrant knitwear sector needs investment in skills and people, supporting makers who value quality and care over shortcuts demanded by markets

Over the past month I’ve found myself reaching for knitwear almost instinctively. Thick jumpers pulled on before the school run. Soft lambswool layers wrapped around me while answering emails late at night. Knitwear has a way of grounding us, of offering comfort that feels both physical and emotional.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve been lingering, almost reverently, over the jumpers worn by Claudia Winkleman on The Traitors. Each piece tells a quiet story of Scotland, of texture, colour and craft, showcased unapologetically on prime-time TV. It is a reminder knitwear is not merely clothing; it is culture, identity and memory stitched together.

However, behind this renewed visibility lies a far more fragile reality.

Scotland’s knitwear industry was once a powerhouse of global significance. In the Scottish Borders alone, towns such as Hawick and Galashiels supported hundreds of mills at their peak, employing tens of thousands of highly skilled workers. Knitwear was not niche; it was infrastructure. It shaped local economies, labour markets and family histories.

Today that dense industrial ecosystem has been reduced to a small residual cluster. By 2021 detailed academic mapping by Professor Allen J Scott, an economic geographer at UCLA, identified just 27 surviving woollen knitwear and woven fabric establishments across the Borders. These were not design studios or brand headquarters but operational manufacturing sites where knitting, weaving, dyeing and finishing still physically take place.

Dr Antoinette Fionda-Douglas is co-founder of Beira, and assistant professor at Heriot-Watt University (Image: Supplied)

Employment within this residual cluster has fallen to a........

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