There is a particular kind of story you inherit without ever being formally told. It lives in objects, textures, in the things you reach for without thinking. For me, it has always been wool, woven quietly into my understanding of fashion and what it means to dress with intention.
There is a particular kind of story you inherit without ever being formally told. It lives in objects, textures, in the things you reach for without thinking. For me, it has always been wool, woven quietly into my understanding of fashion and what it means to dress with intention.
I was born in London and am now the PR coordinator at Gertrude Lee, where I spend much of my time shaping stories and writing the chapters that define how a brand is seen and felt. But the instinct to care about what something is made of and where it comes from didn’t begin in fashion. It began much earlier, in something closer to minimalism, a quiet awareness of what endures, split between two places that could not feel more different to me, yet are bound by the same thread.
On my father’s side, there is Donegal. The kind of landscape that feels almost resistant to comfort. The wind arrives before you do, and stays long after. It shapes everything: coastlines, houses, and people. I visited a woollen mill as a girl, tied loosely to my family, where the air itself seemed thick with fibres. The wool was coarse and made to last. Jumpers were not chosen; they were relied upon. Even in the summer, when the air softened slightly, there was always a need for something dependable. You wear wool not because it is beautiful, but because it works. And in that, there is its own kind of beauty, one that sits comfortably within the idea of quiet luxury. It doesn’t ask for attention; it simply delivers.
Scotland, through my mother’s side, feels like a different expression of the same material. Softer in tone, perhaps, but no less defined by it. I grew up spending summers in the Highlands, returning to the same places until they began to feel like an extension of home. There is a romance to the Great Glens of Scotland, the mist that settles into the landscape. My family belongs to Clan Donnachaidh, a lineage that is woven into the fabric of place as much as it is into people.
Wool in Scotland carries history differently. Through tartan, it becomes identity. Originally, these patterns were practical, determined by the natural dyes available in a region, but over time, they evolved into markers of belonging. Colours and weaves began to signify clan, geography, and allegiance. What you wore could tell someone where you came from before you ever spoke. It is, in many ways, the foundation of a capsule wardrobe, pieces that hold meaning, that last, that are returned to again and again.
I think about that often, the way materials travel, and evolve. How something born out of necessity becomes, over time, a symbol of refinement. And yet, it remains unchanged.
Now, living in Stockholm, my relationship to wool feels both distant and deeply present. I have blankets from both sides of my family, Irish and Scottish, folded into my home. They are not placed with intention for how they might be seen. as they always have, offering a kind of quiet continuity. In a space that reflects a certain Scandinavian style, clean and considered, they hold something inherited.
Wool has never been seasonal. It isn’t something that appears in October and disappears again in April. It is constant. A material that carries memory as much as it does warmth. It speaks to a way of dressing and living that aligns with minimalist fashion: fewer things, chosen well, worn often, kept close.
Perhaps that is why I am drawn to the kind of fashion that endures. The pieces that do not rely on a moment, but instead build meaning over time. In my work, and in how I choose to present things, there is always an underlying question of permanence. What softens but does not disappear?
In the end, wool is not just a yarn. It is a thread that runs quietly through everything, across countries, across generations, across versions of myself. A soft armour, of sorts. Something that holds its shape, even as everything around it changes.