{"title":"Knitwear","description":"\u003cp\u003eA knit is really just one continuous loop pulled through itself thousands of times, which is why it stretches when woven cloth simply refuses to. It gives under the hand and comes back, and that give is the whole reason it's forgiving to wear. Each piece is attended to in its own time before it's packed and sent from Melbourne.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"moschino-baby-rose-pink-textured-knit-dress-dropped-waist","title":"Fashion Baby · Moschino Baby Rose Knit Dress, 2010s","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFine textured cotton knit · dropped waist · gathered skirt · shoulder snaps · \u003cem\u003eMoschino Baby\u003c\/em\u003e · Italian · 2010s · AU size 2, approx 18-24 months\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDusty rose, fine-knit and Italian, and more quietly elegant than you might expect. The house known for wit and spectacle in its grown-up line makes beautiful, restrained children's pieces, and this is one of them: fine textured cotton knit with a faint self-stripe, falling from a plain round neck to a dropped waist where the skirt gathers gently.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eMoschino Baby\u003c\/em\u003e, 2010s. Franco Moschino founded his house in 1983 on the principle that fashion should be playful and self-aware, and the children's line carries that lightness without the provocation. Small snap fastenings at one shoulder ease the dress over a kid's head without ceremony. The cleverness here is entirely in the cloth and the proportion, which is exactly the right place to put it: a designer baby dress that is also genuinely comfortable to wear, which is rarer than it should be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe knit is springy and even, the dropped waist clean and precise. A very good day dress for a very good day.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44084118290566,"sku":null,"price":140.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_2734.jpg?v=1782172894"},{"product_id":"after-dark-boots-uk-1960s-black-knit-beaded-bag","title":"After Dark · Boots UK 1960s Black Knit Beaded Bag","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWoven knit with jet bugle bead embellishment and loop fringe · wrist purse · Boots Company UK · 1960s · approx. 12cm wide x 15cm tall\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJet bugle beads, column upon column, so densely worked across the face of this little wrist bag that the knit ground beneath is almost entirely hidden. At the hem, looped bead fringe that moves when you carry it. This bag does not whisper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe\u003cem\u003e Boots Company\u003c\/em\u003e is remembered as the British pharmacy chain, but for a particular decade of the 1960s it read the mood of what women actually wanted to wear out in the evenings, and produced accessories with this kind of finish at a price that meant they didn't have to think twice. There is something quietly political about a beaded evening bag from a chemist: the implicit position being that a woman going to a party should not require a special budget to look magnificent. The fringe agrees.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJet glass bugle beads throughout the body, looped seed bead fringe at the hem. Dense, satisfying weight in the hand.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44108984549510,"sku":null,"price":35.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_2868copy.jpg?v=1782256449"},{"product_id":"menagerie-tsumori-chisato-illustrated-knit-dress","title":"Picture Book · Tsumori Chisato 1990s Illustrated Wool Knit Dress","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTsumori Chisato · 1990s, the label's first decade · hand-drawn print of birds and sea creatures · charcoal wool knit · metallic crochet neckline trim · silver thread seams · L 95cm flat · AU 10–14 · very good condition\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpend a minute with the print and it keeps introducing new characters: birds, sea creatures, an octopus unfurling in orange, florals in teal and violet and gold, and the designer's own name hiding in the drawings like a signature worked into a mural. All of it hand-drawn in the loose, joyful line that belongs unmistakably to Tsumori Chisato, printed across a soft charcoal wool knit and finished at the neckline with a braid of black-and-silver metallic crochet.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a 1990s piece, from the label's first and most collected decade. Chisato trained at Bunka in Tokyo and joined Issey Miyake's design company in 1977, rising to head the Issey Sport line before Miyake himself encouraged her to launch her own label in 1990. The illustrated prints of those early-label years, drawn by her own hand and dense with hidden creatures and lettering, are exactly what collectors hunt now. She became one of Japanese fashion's great storytellers, building collections like picture books, serious craft wearing a childlike grin. And she drew on wool here: a fine jersey with the gentle brushed surface wool takes on, warm without weight, with fine silver thread caught in the seams. Whimsy, rigorously made.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44149787033734,"sku":null,"price":240.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_3771.jpg?v=1784766421"},{"product_id":"undertow-paola-ermini-firenze-1990s-2000s-sheer-knit-dress","title":"Undertow · Paola Ermini Firenze 2000s Sheer Knit Dress","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003ePaola Ermini Firenze · 2000s · no size tagged, generous stretch fits a broad range · exhibition condition, no flaws · \u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eViscose-elastane gossamer knit · boat neck \u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e · batwing sleeves with a tapered cuff \u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e · deep side vents\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHold this dress up to a lamp and you can see straight through it, a fine dark knit that keeps its secrets badly. Whatever is worn underneath shows through as a soft shadow, the ghost of a seam, a strap, a shape. It is a dress built on that small tension, decent from a distance and confessional up close.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is a whole quiet school of dressing built on this kind of restraint, women learning from the eighties onward that a dress could be a single unbroken thought rather than a sentence full of commas: one seam, one drop, one idea allowed to fall exactly as gravity intended. The batwing belongs to that school, engineered so the sleeve becomes the bodice becomes the skirt without ever announcing where one stops. Paola Ermini still works this way in Florence, in cloth so fine it behaves more like a held breath than a fabric. What makes this piece worth keeping is the discipline of it: nothing added, nothing excused, a dress that trusts a single cut to do the work most designers spend six seams doing badly.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe neckline sits wide and straight across the collarbone in a boat cut, with dramatic batwing sleeves that taper down to a fitted, elasticated cuff. The body falls loose from the shoulder before dropping into deep vents at each side seam, the hem finishing in soft, uneven points. There is no visible closure. She pulls on, and the knit does the rest of the shaping itself. Worn loose she reads as an easy layering piece over trousers; cinched at the waist with a metal belt, or worn alone, she does just as well as a dress in her own right.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44183842717830,"sku":null,"price":145.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_3898.jpg?v=1784851043"}],"url":"https:\/\/checkout.caitiedid.shop\/collections\/collections-vintage-knitwear.oembed","provider":"caitiedid","version":"1.0","type":"link"}