Since September 2018, Augustin Dol-Maillot has been artistic director at the House of Barrie. Born in 1989, he joined the CHANEL studio alongside Karl Lagerfeld and Virginie Viard.

His vision is both graphic and modern, and his taste for streetwear is leading cashmere into a gentle revolution. His creation studio, located in Paris, focuses daily on the savoir-faire and the constant innovation of the atelier which is located in Hawick, Scotland: “The beauty of the challenge, is that the technical feats always push creativity ever further. From one stitch or one knit, we create another, and so it continues… This is how the brand tells its story over the collections. Cashmere is a raw material, we have to explore its infinite possibilities.”

Each BARRIE garment may require as many as forty operations, most of them done by hand utilising the artisan skills passed from generation to generation. Each creation is the result of a specific program. The panels making up a garment are knitted on the Bentley Cotton knitting looms that were specially created in the 1960s, and are manoeuvred by the expert hands of engineers.

Each part of the garment is then rigorously inspected to ensure their irreproachable quality.

The pieces are washed in the pure waters of the Teviot, a river close to the factory – an essential step of the process that gives the knit its “Scottish hand” identity and the ultimate guarantee of a durable cashmere.

The garment is then meticulously darned and assembled by hand.

The Parisian studio provides the creative impulse all while working hand in hand with the craftsmen and engineers at the factory, whose technical mastery allows for the most beautiful of innovations, such as the 3D knits and the trompe-l’oeil pieces.

Based in Hawick, a small town in the Scottish Borders, 85 km from Edinburgh, since 1903, the Barrie manufactory now has more than two hundred employees, all committed to the excellence of their savoir-faire, anchored in the region for more than a century. Since 2012, the Barrie training school has been teaching the technical skills necessary to work at the manufactory. Spread over two years this training course ensures the perpetuation of a unique heritage aligning ancestral techniques with the latest innovations.

Barrie, founded in 1903 in Hawick, a small village in the Scottish Borders, is one of the oldest cashmere factories in Scotland. Having started by making stockings, the factory extended its savoir-faire in the 1920s to clothing, and in particular sweaters and knitwear.

While tradition and technique are unwavering values at the House, it also stands out for its taste in innovation and daring. This is why, as well as supplying the biggest names in fashion, starting with CHANEL, Barrie launched its own brand in 2014.

Since 2018, under the impetus of artistic director Augustin Dol-Maillot, cashmere has become a field of pure exploration combining the factory’s creativity and savoir-faire.