A good yarn

Meet British fashion's dynamic duo. Their mission impos-sible: to sex up Pringle – the brand once synonymous with golf kitsch. Between them they have all the necessary fashion credentials. Creative director Clare Waight Keller, an elegant brunette of 39, was the senior designer at Ralph Lauren and then Gucci before she was lured to the venerable British fashion house. She lives in Kensington with her husband and seven-year-old twin daughters and is passionate about knitwear, having been knitting herself since the age of five. Chief executive Mary-Adair Macaire, petite and russet-haired, spent 22 years at Chanel – a company that wrote the book on brand relevancy and reinventing itself,' she points out. Born in Philadelphia, she originally wanted to be a maritime lawyer before turning to fashion.

Despite the current economic climate, the
fashion mood is in their favour. When money is tight, authenticity and longevity are valued. The resurgence of classic British labels Mulberry and Burberry, with Jaeger and Aquascutum coming up behind, are encouraging signs. With 195 years of continuous history, Pringle has more than enough
heritage to weigh it down or bolster it up. But it also has a mammoth obstacle in its quest for cutting-edge chic: Nick Faldo.

In the 1980s, the company signed a 20-year deal with the English golfer which even allowed him to design his own collection, sending Pringle hurtling into the fashion rough. Even now, the brand is indelibly associated with naff pastel Argyle jumpers. I'm totally sick of it!' snaps Waight Keller. Macaire is kinder. Nick Faldo did a brilliant job of making it a golf brand. Hats off to him,' she says tactfully. He was very relevant to a swatch of customers, but I see Pringle as much broader in its appeal. I didn't even know it as a golf brand till I moved here. I knew it as a yummy cashmere sweater company. For 175 of its 195 years, this company had a great message and focused on what it did best.'

The brand was founded in 1815 at Hawick in the
Scottish Borders by local businessman Robert
Pringle as a maker of woollen underwear, but over the decades the quality of its knitwear and the
company's willingness to innovate gave it a global presence. We invented the term knitwear,' says Macaire. We were the first to take knitwear and make it outerwear, and now knitwear is important for every house that does ready-to-wear. We invented the Argyle check and the twinset. What an innocuous garment, but it's so comfortable, great to travel with, and everybody does it now.' The Duke of Windsor championed the Argyle check, Noël Coward wore Pringle's pink cashmere, and Grace Kelly's twinset was a key element of her look. She made the twinset into something every girl wanted,' says Macaire.

But in the late 1960s, the company was bought by what is now Dawson International, a major supplier of cashmere to the US with brands such as Kinross and Barrie, and was reinvented as a sports brand. Its descent into naffness was only checked in 2000 when, as a loss-making firm, it was bought by the Hong Kong-based Fang Brothers, owners of Episode and suppliers of textiles to Marks & Spencer, Gap and DKNY. Within days they ended the association with Faldo, and fashion guru
Kim Winser, who went on to be Aquascutum's CEO, was recruited to start Pringle's transformation back into a high-fashion brand.

Waight Keller was brought on board in 2005. Her first impulse was to take the label back to its earliest roots. Vests, long johns, socks, all the underpinnings I thought that was so much nicer in terms of things I could draw on.' The brand's iconic Argyle pattern was now so indelibly associated with the white-sock brigade that it alarmed her: You can't keep putting it out there when it's not relevant.' Her interpretation of the Argyle check is, in any case, not always one the Duke of Windsor would recognise. For her menswear collection this year she's taken it hi-tech. We've injection-moulded it and embossed the cable into it, so you totally
recognise it, but it's completely different. That's the way it should be,' she says.

Macaire, then working at Chanel, remembers
Waight Keller's first collection. I was looking through Vogue and I came across this ad for a great hand-knit tunic and stopped. I loved the picture, and it said Pringle. I thought, "Oh my God! I remember them!" I tore out the picture and became a motivated customer. But no shops stocked it in Paris. I went to Hong Kong, and they carried the line, but they didn't have that sweater, so I never got it. But I thought about it. Every season, I'd look them up. And three years later they called me.'

The summer before she started work, she went into Pringle's boutique to buy a present for a Chanel colleague – the most chic woman I knew' – who had told her that, as a girl, she'd longed for a Pringle twinset. I wanted to buy one for her and send it to her with a note saying, "Now your life is complete!" But they didn't have any. The salesgirl didn't even know what a twinset was. That was how far away we'd come from what we'd been.'

To add to her difficulties, Macaire had only been in the job for a couple of weeks before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. She must have missed her safe berth at Chanel? Of course that runs through your mind,' she concedes. We were dramatically affected. We have the smallest distribution of any of our competitors – we only have four stores, two here and two in Hong Kong, and no ecommerce – so all my ideas had to be done with a lot less money.'
And while the politicians are trumpeting the end of the recession, Macaire says, Our tough time is now.'

To secure Pringle, she got new investment
to cover an ecommerce website and a major revamp of the flagship Bond Street store. A New York store is planned for 2011, which will be followed by others in Paris, Hong Kong, Beijing, Milan and LA.