……………………….Knit wear was an important part of every collection, and Spring of 1991 was no different………….At Anne Klein I had a wonderful assistant who’s specialty was knits. Her name was Fran and she was in charge of the knit wear department. She came to me as a hand knitter, and I soon hired her because of her talent. I used to call her “Needles” because she was an incredible at doing hand knit samples. She was very creative which helped me a lot. Designing novelty knits is a whole different ball of wax! She worked on all of the Italian production and the development of special stitches and all hand knits. I would show Fran a sketch of an idea I had and she would start to develop swatches with different yarns in different gauges until she came up with the one I liked. Each hand knit was a challenge especially an abstract like the one above that had no repeat. I took a large piece of paper and started drawing the design, and then Fran had to figure out, stitch by stitch, how to get it done. These sweaters were limited editions, and the stores were only allowed to buy a certain amount. Fran had established a small cottage industry of women who hand knitted the production. They were all in the NY area so Fran could oversee what they were doing………When I lefty AK Fran later went on to become the head of the Ralph Lauren knitwear division……a multi million dollar business. I heard she’s retired now, but I’m sure she’s still knitting something!! The hand knit sweater above was a blend of silk and cotton. The silk gave it a soft hand and the cotton gave it the loftiness I was looking for. These novelty sweaters always did well.
That sweater is gorgeous. RL certainly knew what they were doing when they hired Fran. If Fran was in my family, I know what I would ask for each Christmas…a hand-knitted sweater!