A London based knitwear company has been awarded first prize at the fourth annual Pitch@Palace competition, which was hosted by Prince Andrew the Duke of York this week, the news provider 3Ders.org reports.

The company has combined new technologies and traditional knitting practices to promote more conscious fashion consumption. The brand uses bespoke software and Stoll flat knitting machines to create unique and customised pieces of knitwear.

The company aims to slow down fast fashion and fight the problem of unsold items ending up in a landfill. Crafted from high quality extra fine Merino and Italian-spun Cashmere, the company’s knitwear items cater to a new generation: an inquisitive society conscious of where and how clothing is manufactured.

Coding is key

Unmade was founded in 2013 by Ben Alun-Jones, Hal Watts, and Kirsty Emery, all students from the Royal College of Art who studied industrial design (Watts and Alun-Jones) and knitwear (Emery).

The concept for Unmade came about from sharing their varied interests and they saw potential in applying 3D printing technology to a kitting machine. The result is a clothing production company that utilizes coding to power knitting machines, working in a similar fashion to 3D printers. It allows its clients to custom-design knitwear that is manufactured just for them in just 90 minutes.

"Our technology effectively turns 20% of the manufacturing base into 3D printers for clothes. This means that we can produce 1,000 unique products at the same unit cost as if I was making 1,000 of the same design," said Watts.

Locations

Unmade launched a pop-up shop at Somerset House in 2014 under the name Knyttan, unveiling its next-level knitwear factory to the public for the first time. The company was then introduced to Christopher Raeburn by way of The Woolmark Company and collaborated on a capsule collection of graphic jumpers which will be available next year to buy and customise online.

The Unmade website will launch on 16 November, and the company will open a pop-up shop in Convent Garden until Christmas at which point they will have a shop in Selfridges on Oxford Street. 

The locations will feature a knitting machine and the software for customers to play with the interface and adjust the designs, with the opportunity to even bring home their creations on the day. Because of the level of personalization and the quality materials they are made of, the garments won’t be cheap, with a sweater costing around £120 and a scarf costing about £60.

New experience

The company emphasises its focus on manufacturing items that have been directly ordered by them, effectively eliminating the problem of unsold items ending up in a landfill. “We seem to have lost something in mass production where you are making things for everyone, but everything is made for no one,” said Alun-Jones.

“We are building a completely new experience for the customer where you can be part of the creation process. We have made our own file format that is like an MP3 is to music – we have created a .KNIT which is a file format for knitting.” Essentially, the file format contains knitting instructions for a piece of clothing and is designed to communicate to a piece of technology that is installed in the knitting machine, which subsequently generates a code to knit a garment.

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