Lifestyle Shopping&Fashion
Hot legs
Slide your pins into some hand-printed, quirked-up, made-in-Scotland hosiery, suggests Anna Burnside
WE SAW YOU Lindsey Macadie 28, primary teacher. On Argyll Street, Glasgow.
My t-shirt is Marc Jacobs. I got it in a shop down in Nottingham.
The jeans are from TopShop and the shoes are from New Look. That’s really boring though. I love making stuff myself. I studied fashion and textiles at uni, and I still love picking up second-hand things and customising them.
The handbag I picked up at a car boot sale in France. It was one euro, I was so chuffed. I love this bag. 30 THE LIST 7–21 Oct 2010
F or anyone who has stifled a yawn as they pulled on their winter opaques, or left John Lewis’s hoisery department bored and empty handed, help is here. The hoisery cavalry, in the shape of cousins Nikki and Danni McWilliams, are charging into the underwear drawers of the nation, bringing edgy colours, kooky prints and a judicious sprinkling of Swarovski to brighten up dreary legs.
Together the McWilliams are Tights for Sore Eyes, making magnificently bonkers hand- printed tights and pop socks for sale at the coolest craft sales and online at their Folksy shop. The pair messed about with sewing machines as little girls, grew up and went to Duncan of Jordanstone to study fine art (Nikki) and Heriot Watt to learn clothing design and manufacture (Danni). Nikki had already started making and selling wacky printed textiles and when Danni graduated it was only natural that they should get together and design hoisery featuring teapots, moustaches and custard creams. ‘The way we process them is not a commercial way of producing anything,’ she says. ‘They are for people who appreciate one-off things: hand made, hand screen printed. It’s all been done on a local level. Anybody can get tights from Primark. We wanted to make something that was unique and affordable at the same time.’
That is an understatement: nothing costs more than £15 and everything from the packaging to the pressing is done by either Danni or Nikki. The results are something you certainly don’t see on the high street. Foxy mink pop socks with twinkly crystals. Plum or bottle green tights with ankle-height cityscapes and tiny stars – also crystals – sprinkled up the leg. Violent yellow tights with a toxic factory on one knee and skull and crossbones on the other. There is nothing the McWilliams like better than matching a customer’s legs with the perfect
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BUY THE WAY NEWS FROM THE SHOP FRONT
HARAJUKU GIRLS, Teddy boys, emos, crusties, punks, ravers – they are all to be found hanging out in fashion writer/photographer Ted Polhemus’s influential
book Street Style, first published in 1994 (and massively pre-dating today’s tsunami wave of street style bloggers). The photography tome that Chloe Sevigny once called her ‘sartorial bible’ has just been reissued, with nearly 100 extra pages and 5 new chapters. Signed copies are available for £19.95 from www.pymca.com, or two lucky List readers can win a signed copy by entering our competition at www.list.co.uk/offers. Closing date is Thu 21 Oct.
RUBBER-DRESS and Russell Brand-loving poplet, Katy Perry is a fan of Fifi Wilson in London, and now the upmarket fashion boutique is coming to Edinburgh, with a branch opening in Bruntsfield in October, selling See by Chloe, Marc by Marc Jacobs and Odd Molly amongst other designers. Fifi Wilson, 181 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh, 228 2929, Mon–Sat, 10–6pm, www.fifiwilson.com
THE SCOTTISH craft portal Papa Stour has recently added new lines, including felt and soft-as- butter leather iPod and iPhone (£16) covers (pictured, left) by Edinburgh-based designer Susie Maroon; plus merino lambswool blankets (£100) and toasty Fairisle hot water bottle covers (£36) by Kate. www.papastour.com, 07922 771424.
shade of violet and a whale spouting water thighwards. ‘The best bit is when you think, “That’s the right pair of tights for that person, they’re going love them.”’ to
www.tightsfor soreeyes.com/ folksy.com. TFSE will also be at Petite Noël Christmas market, Roseangle Cafe Arts, Dundee, 5–9pm on Wed 15 Dec. You can visit the Dundee Jamboree blog at www.dundeejamboree.blogspot.com
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