Iki pasimatymo, Roma!

We’ve had our last Italian cappuccino for breakfast, our last slice of Italian pizza for lunch and we’re sitting at gate D05 waiting to board our AirBaltic flight to Lithuania. Before I bid farewell to Rome and return to Vilnius, before I come back to writing about the history and traditions of Lithuanian knitting, I want to say a few words about the things I love at the other end of the spectrum: modern fashion and design. I do love old things and using antique and vintage textiles as windows into the past, but I equally love experimental, new design aesthetics and using fresh ideas to create windows into the future.

From the runways of designer fashion shows, the shelves of couture and discount clothing stores, and the pages of magazines about art, fashion, and design, Rome fed this second obsession of mine in a way it hasn’t been fed in years. Wherever I looked, I saw knitting being used, sold, and worn.

Prada knitted leather clutch

I’ve never seen myself as a fashion designer, not even a knitwear designer. As the author of six knitting books and many articles about knitting and quite a few knitting patterns, I have always considered myself a writer. When I have designed garments and accessories it’s almost always been with a nod to the past, creating an interpretation of an historical or vintage piece, using variations and combinations of traditional stitches. Although for years I sewed all of my own clothes and I have an understanding about the shapes of garment pieces, I have no theoretical knowledge about garment construction, fabric drape, or design.

Cabled wrap in discount fashion shop

But for the past few years, I’ve been feeling a desire to take my work, in writing and in knitting, in more creative directions. What does that mean? I am not sure. I still don’t want to be a fashion designer (or the “next great American novelist”). But I want to do work that is less tied to historical precedent and that gives me more freedom to play. What I create may not even be clothing or how-to related. At the airport news stand, I picked up a copy of the Belgian magazine, DAMn (“a magazine of contemporary culture,” according to the subtitle), and found a variety of unusual knitted projects within its pages including this closet knitter.

I’ve always loves the ideas of craft and design as well as the idea of art. Craft as something that can be learned rather than requiring a magical innate talent; design as something that makes the functional beautiful rather than creating beauty for its own sake; art as something that opens new ways of thought and feeling to us without telling us what to think or how to feel. How and when these overlap intrigues me.

Missoni knitted boots

I know that was a bit of digression, bit that’s how my mind works. And this entire post is a digression, so why not indulge?

With Italy being one of the fashion capitals of the world, the people here dress comfortably and easily. Whether they are wearing suits and dresses or jeans and t-shirts, almost everyone looks relaxed and at home in their clothes. In Vilnius so many people, or at least everyone under 30, seem to be trying too hard. They look somehow stiff and artificial in their oversexed, overly primped, over the top ensembles. They appear slightly uncomfortable and overly self aware, like they are trying to become something they are not or like they are trying to resist becoming what their grandparents were. This is true even of models in knitting books and fashion ads. In Italy, perhaps, there’s more comfort with the past, and also with the future, even when that future includes our inevitable aging.

An ad for knitted fashions in Vilnius.

I wonder how I appear to strangers.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Rome, Fiumicino Airport