Originally published via The Herald. - This article is reproduced in full and unchanged from its original publication.
Author: Dr Antoinette Fionda-Douglas
Co-Founder of Beira and Assistant Professor, Heriot-Watt University
We are sharing this piece as it features ERIBÉ founder Rosemary Eribé as the sole industry spokesperson and speaks powerfully to the present and future of Scottish knitwear. All words below are the author’s own.
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.
Author: Dr Antoinette Fionda-Douglas
Co-Founder of Beira and Assistant Professor, Heriot-Watt University
We are sharing this piece as it features ERIBÉ founder Rosemary Eribé as the sole industry spokesperson and speaks powerfully to the present and future of Scottish knitwear. All words below are the author’s own.
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 also been lingering, almost reverently, over the jumpers worn by Claudia Winkleman on The Traitors. Each piece seems to tell a quiet story of Scotland, of texture, colour and craft showcased unapologetically on prime-time television. It is a reminder that knitwear is not merely clothing; it is culture, identity and memory stitched together.
Yet 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.
Yet 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.
Crucially, Scott’s analysis foregrounds the growing gap between Scotland’s enduring knitwear identity and its shrinking capacity for domestic production. While Scottish branding continues to enjoy renewed cultural cachet in global luxury markets, the physical infrastructure required to manufacture knitwear in Scotland has continued to contract. The danger is not simply reduced output, but the loss of place-based capabilities. Manufacturing is path dependent. When mills shut, they almost never return. When skilled labour disperses, the conditions required to rebuild it are rarely put back in place.
This decline did not happen overnight. It is the cumulative result of globalisation, outsourcing, price competition, and decades of policy decisions that consistently undervalued manufacturing in favour of cheaper imports. As production moved offshore, Scotland lost not only factories, but tacit knowledge: the embodied expertise of knitters, technicians, and finishers whose skills take years to master. Many of those workers now stack shelves or work in entirely different sectors, carrying with them a level of craft the industry no longer has space to hold.
Since that 2021 mapping, pressures on the Borders knitwear industry have continued. Beyond Hawick Knitwear entering administration in 2023, there have been no widely reported large-scale factory closures, but the episode served as a stark reminder of how exposed even long-established manufacturers remain within an increasingly fragile production ecosystem.
And yet, the story does not end in loss alone.
What remains of Scottish knitwear today is not mass production, but something arguably more precious. The surviving businesses operate in a narrow but demanding space: luxury, longevity, and export-led excellence. They compete not on speed or volume, but on quality, integrity, and provenance. This is where companies like ERIBÉ matter so deeply, not simply as businesses, but as custodians of a living tradition.
Founded in the mid-1980s by Rosemary Eribé, ERIBÉ grew not from inherited capital or institutional privilege, but from persistence, adaptability, and an insistence on doing things differently. Entering a male-dominated industry at a time when women designers were routinely marginalised, Rosemary learned quickly that she would not be invited into existing power structures. “I realised very early on that the men didn’t even see me,” she reflects. “So I stopped waiting to be included and focused on learning, asking questions and finding ways to survive.”
That survival instinct became a philosophy. Where much of the industry operated in isolation, ERIBÉ was built on collaboration, between spinners, knitters, designers, factories, and customers. This approach was not accidental. It emerged directly from Rosemary Eribé’s early experiences of exclusion, hierarchy, and poor workplace culture, and from a conscious decision to build something different. Rather than replicating the individualism she encountered, she shaped ERIBÉ as a collective, people-centred business, one where shared knowledge, mutual respect and long-term relationships were central to how the company functioned.
This ethos feels quietly radical in an industry that shrank precisely because those connective tissues were allowed to fray. As mills closed across the Borders, entire communities unravelled. Rosemary remembers factories not simply as places of work, but as social ecosystems. “They were like villages,” she recalls. “All generations working together, with social clubs, events, competition between factories. When they closed, it wasn’t just jobs that disappeared, it was community.”
Sustainability, too, takes on a different meaning in this context. Long before it became a marketing buzzword, Scottish knitwear was inherently low impact. Natural fibres, durable construction, and garments designed to last decades rather than seasons were simply standard practice. For Rosemary, sustainability has always been rooted in restraint and responsibility. “We were sustainable before we had the word for it,” she explains. “We didn’t waste because we couldn’t afford to waste. Once you work with natural fibres, you understand how precious and limited they are.”
What concerns her now is how easily we confuse visibility with security. Seeing Scottish knitwear celebrated on television screens does not mean the industry is safe. Cultural cachet does not pay energy bills. Heritage alone cannot sustain a workforce. Without coordinated investment in skills, education and manufacturing infrastructure, even the most respected brands remain vulnerable.
And yet, there are signs of cautious renewal. Selective investment by Scottish manufacturers signals belief in onshore production. Factories choosing to invest in machinery and people are making a statement of intent, not just about product, but about place.
Female leadership has also quietly reshaped the narrative. Women like Rosemary Eribé have built businesses that prioritise people, relationships, and long-term thinking, often while balancing caregiving responsibilities that the industry has historically ignored. “You feel the fear,” she says, “but you do it anyway. You learn to be flexible, to keep asking questions, and to keep going."
As I pull on another jumper this winter, I’m reminded that knitwear is intimate. It sits closest to the skin. It carries warmth, but also values. Choosing Scottish knitwear is not about nostalgia or national pride alone. It is a decision about what kind of economy we want to support, what kinds of skills we believe are worth preserving, and whose labour we choose to see.
The future of Scottish knitwear will not be measured in factory counts or employment figures alone, though those matter deeply. It will be measured in whether we are willing to invest in people, in skills, and in businesses that refuse to cut corners even when the global market demands it. It will depend on whether collaboration replaces isolation, whether sustainability is treated as practice rather than performance, and whether we allow makers who believe in long-term value to shape what comes next.
Knitwear may look cosy. But its future demands courage, coordination, and care.
This decline did not happen overnight. It is the cumulative result of globalisation, outsourcing, price competition, and decades of policy decisions that consistently undervalued manufacturing in favour of cheaper imports. As production moved offshore, Scotland lost not only factories, but tacit knowledge: the embodied expertise of knitters, technicians, and finishers whose skills take years to master. Many of those workers now stack shelves or work in entirely different sectors, carrying with them a level of craft the industry no longer has space to hold.
Since that 2021 mapping, pressures on the Borders knitwear industry have continued. Beyond Hawick Knitwear entering administration in 2023, there have been no widely reported large-scale factory closures, but the episode served as a stark reminder of how exposed even long-established manufacturers remain within an increasingly fragile production ecosystem.
And yet, the story does not end in loss alone.
What remains of Scottish knitwear today is not mass production, but something arguably more precious. The surviving businesses operate in a narrow but demanding space: luxury, longevity, and export-led excellence. They compete not on speed or volume, but on quality, integrity, and provenance. This is where companies like ERIBÉ matter so deeply, not simply as businesses, but as custodians of a living tradition.
Founded in the mid-1980s by Rosemary Eribé, ERIBÉ grew not from inherited capital or institutional privilege, but from persistence, adaptability, and an insistence on doing things differently. Entering a male-dominated industry at a time when women designers were routinely marginalised, Rosemary learned quickly that she would not be invited into existing power structures. “I realised very early on that the men didn’t even see me,” she reflects. “So I stopped waiting to be included and focused on learning, asking questions and finding ways to survive.”
That survival instinct became a philosophy. Where much of the industry operated in isolation, ERIBÉ was built on collaboration, between spinners, knitters, designers, factories, and customers. This approach was not accidental. It emerged directly from Rosemary Eribé’s early experiences of exclusion, hierarchy, and poor workplace culture, and from a conscious decision to build something different. Rather than replicating the individualism she encountered, she shaped ERIBÉ as a collective, people-centred business, one where shared knowledge, mutual respect and long-term relationships were central to how the company functioned.
This ethos feels quietly radical in an industry that shrank precisely because those connective tissues were allowed to fray. As mills closed across the Borders, entire communities unravelled. Rosemary remembers factories not simply as places of work, but as social ecosystems. “They were like villages,” she recalls. “All generations working together, with social clubs, events, competition between factories. When they closed, it wasn’t just jobs that disappeared, it was community.”
Sustainability, too, takes on a different meaning in this context. Long before it became a marketing buzzword, Scottish knitwear was inherently low impact. Natural fibres, durable construction, and garments designed to last decades rather than seasons were simply standard practice. For Rosemary, sustainability has always been rooted in restraint and responsibility. “We were sustainable before we had the word for it,” she explains. “We didn’t waste because we couldn’t afford to waste. Once you work with natural fibres, you understand how precious and limited they are.”
What concerns her now is how easily we confuse visibility with security. Seeing Scottish knitwear celebrated on television screens does not mean the industry is safe. Cultural cachet does not pay energy bills. Heritage alone cannot sustain a workforce. Without coordinated investment in skills, education and manufacturing infrastructure, even the most respected brands remain vulnerable.
And yet, there are signs of cautious renewal. Selective investment by Scottish manufacturers signals belief in onshore production. Factories choosing to invest in machinery and people are making a statement of intent, not just about product, but about place.
Female leadership has also quietly reshaped the narrative. Women like Rosemary Eribé have built businesses that prioritise people, relationships, and long-term thinking, often while balancing caregiving responsibilities that the industry has historically ignored. “You feel the fear,” she says, “but you do it anyway. You learn to be flexible, to keep asking questions, and to keep going."
As I pull on another jumper this winter, I’m reminded that knitwear is intimate. It sits closest to the skin. It carries warmth, but also values. Choosing Scottish knitwear is not about nostalgia or national pride alone. It is a decision about what kind of economy we want to support, what kinds of skills we believe are worth preserving, and whose labour we choose to see.
The future of Scottish knitwear will not be measured in factory counts or employment figures alone, though those matter deeply. It will be measured in whether we are willing to invest in people, in skills, and in businesses that refuse to cut corners even when the global market demands it. It will depend on whether collaboration replaces isolation, whether sustainability is treated as practice rather than performance, and whether we allow makers who believe in long-term value to shape what comes next.
Knitwear may look cosy. But its future demands courage, coordination, and care.
