Cashmere and coated cotton rarely appear in the same sentence, let alone the same garment. Yet Barrie, the Hawick knitwear house dating back to 1903, and Mackintosh, Glasgow’s rainwear authority since 1824, have worked out a quiet truce. Their new collaboration takes the best-known signatures of each and let’s them meet without collapsing into fusion.
Barrie x Mackintosh Capsule
Exploring the art of collaboration, Augustin Dol-Maillot, Barrie’s artistic director, put it bluntly: “Barrie’s ‘Full Fashioning’ for invisible seams, Mackintosh’s ‘Felling’ for hems: every sacred gesture was respected. Each House preserves its identity, but I orchestrated unexpected encounters.”
The Barrie x Mackintosh collection revolves around three outerwear studies. The MACK 1, a long cotton coat, carries a lining of pleated wool and cashmere that moves stiffly enough to hold form but soft enough to walk in.
The MACK 2 flips the codes: a cropped cotton peacoat layered over a Barrie cashmere vest with generous pockets, lifted from the house’s Timeless 5NEEDLES line.
Then comes the MACK 3, a sleeveless vest that borrows Barrie’s knitwear proportions and recasts them in Mackintosh’s coated cotton, complete with the cross of St. Andrew tucked discreetly beneath the armhole.
Buttons in metal or porcelain, stamped with the same cross, serve as tiny markers of alliance. On the knitwear side, tubular lines recall Mackintosh’s sealing tapes, while a trompe-l’œil cardigan hides its construction inside, leaving only shadows to suggest what lies beneath. Barrie’s seamless knitted trousers close the loop.
Shot against the Highlands and the Borders, the campaign pairs Veronika Heilbrunner and Justin O’Shea, their presence suggesting that heritage and modernity are less opposites than two sides of the same coin.
The Barrie x Mackintosh capsule arrives September 25th in Barrie boutiques, online at barrie.com, and at select retailers, with a Paris pop-up at 23 Rue Cambon opening on September 26th.
