Of the Same Fibre: A Love Letter to New York

I was 22 when I lived in New York, and I have never quite gotten over it. It is the city that taught me incredible independence, how to live, and how to keep up. So when it came time to photograph our latest pieces, there was really only one place to go. This one is written by me, for a city that has stayed with me ever since.

The City

There is no energy like it. New York wakes up before you do and is still going long after you have gone to bed. It is loud, impatient and endlessly generous. Walk ten blocks and you will hear five languages, pass a bakery that has been there for a century and a restaurant that opened last week, and see more personal style than most cities manage in a year.

It is the most diverse place I have ever lived, and that is what makes it so alive. Everyone brings something with them, and the city takes it all in. You feel it most in the food: a bagel eaten standing up on a Saturday morning, dumplings in Chinatown, a long Italian lunch in the West Village, a martini at a bar that has not changed its menu in fifty years. New Yorkers eat the way they live, with appetite and opinion.

And the fashion. New York does not dress up for the sake of it. Style there is practical and personal at the same time. It has to carry you across 40 blocks, three changes of weather and a day that starts with coffee and ends with dinner. What survives that is real style.

THE WOMAN

She is the reason we went. You see her everywhere in New York, and she is never quite the same woman twice.

Downtown, in SoHo, she moves quickly. Denim, a perfect knit, a coat thrown on at the last minute. She has three places to be and makes all of them look effortless. She walks fast but never hurries.

Uptown, on the Upper East Side, she takes her time. A morning walk through Central Park, an hour at the Met, lunch on Madison Avenue that runs well into the afternoon. Her wardrobe is considered rather than loud: beautifully cut trousers, a fine-gauge knit, cashmere in colors that will look as right in ten years as they do today. She has nothing to prove, and it shows.

What they share is ease. Neither of them follows trends. They buy less, choose well and wear it for years. They know the best piece in a wardrobe is the one you reach for without thinking. That is the woman we have been making cashmere for since 2016, wherever she lives.

OF THE SAME FIBRE

This October, my friend Jaime and I spent two days photographing her on her own streets: the cobblestones of SoHo first, then the quieter, more composed avenues of the Upper East Side. I stepped in front of the camera for some of it too, because this campaign was always going to be about us as much as the clothes.

We called it Of the Same Fibre. Some friendships feel like coming home. You can go months without seeing each other and pick up exactly where you left off, and the world feels steadier for having them in it. Cashmere does the same thing. You pull on a sweater you have loved for years and something in you settles. That feeling, the comfort of the familiar and the people who ground you, is what we wanted to capture.

Every piece is 100% A-grade cashmere, made by our New Zealand cashmere house to be worn for years, not seasons. New York became part of me at 22. Seeing our cashmere on those streets, all these years later, felt like coming full circle.

The first pieces from the campaign are online now. The rest arrive in November, we hope you love it.

Elle

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