Guinness is good for you: The mind behind the tee
In conversation: Pickles Knitwear
5th October 2024
By Zakiyah Bello
“I actually hated pickles before, I’d never tried one but they just didn't look appealing to me” - Ella of Pickles Knitwear
Amidst the cool exteriors of the Tom Fords, or the quiet chaos of the Gallianos, there's one thing I've found all designers share. It's a focused, probing gaze that’s steady despite their eccentricities. Ella of Pickles knitwear shares this fixed gaze, and when I got to her studio, I certainly did not regret changing three times before we met.
There is nothing more fascinating than seeing the environment in which an artist works. Whether it’s photos of Leonard Cohen’s little house in Greece or the Studio in which Frank Ocean recorded ‘Blonde’, it’s an intimate, odyssean walk-through the depths of an artist's mind.
There are no shadows in the studio, light touches every corner that isn’t covered in mood boards or blanketed with thick rolls of Italian textile. The new collection hangs close to the ceiling, a beguiling array of autumnal attire peaking around the corner of the opposing side of the studio. A long dress catches my eye in particular, figure-hugging and red as a cabernet. Ella would later show how it can be worn as both a mini or maxi dress. And as with any brilliantly designed garment, I imagined all the occasions that would call for a dress as subtly attention-grabbing as the one before me.
“they’re special occasion dresses without being boring”- E
“We knit at factory quality, we used to have to knit day in day out”
The quality production in question is facilitated by a state of the art knitting machine, an imposing machine that hums softly and fills the warm, dark room with an electronic warmth. The enormous contraption dwarfs its confinements and I wondered absently how they’d gotten it through the halls of the sleek studio building. This is the little factory behind the neat, picturesque studio. Not covered in pinterest inspo but shadowed and curtained, with intricate, attenuated needles that lay in a symphonic arrangement like piano strings.
When we returned to the studio, i asked Ella a few more questions:
Z: Do you feel that via social media, allowing brands to access their consumers directly, it could allow more people to understand what it takes to create the garments that they love?
E: “Definitely, I think there needs to be a change in that, for the sake of our planet, understanding the purpose behind a garment as opposed to a faceless jumper on a rail. More people want to see the story behind what they're buying”
“Fast fashion companies are not going to take the time to be altering patterns, they take a block pattern to fit one body shape”
Z: What does your lightbulb moment feel like?
E: It's so exciting to me, one of the most exciting things is developing a new style, it's where the pure creativity comes out. The challenge is to keep pushing that idea.
Z: Where did the name “Pickles Knitwear” come from?
E: “I actually hated pickles before, I'd never tried one but they just didn't look appealing to me. This girl I was living with was obsessed with pickles, i tried one and was addicted to pickles for a while. I made her a custom which was a pickle jar and I just looked down and thought ,“pickles knitwear”. It reflected the brand as it was then really well. Super playful, very girly and cute while elevated.”
Z: What designers are you inspired by?
E: Martin Margiela, Helmut Lang, but Margiela is number one , nature also inspires me a lot, natural or organic shapes. The colour palette for one of the pieces was actually inspired by a Sargent painting.
Z: What was your thought when you saw it?
E: I just remember thinking he has an amazing way of capturing people and personality, I was so engrossed in his use of colour, I was really mesmerised.
Z: When you’re designing pieces do you imagine a person wearing them?
E: I actually don’t, if anything I'd imagine myself wearing them!
Collection O1 is available now on the Pickles Knitwear website