Mad for HAD – Style Bubble

I shouldn’t really be pondering anything footie related this weekend. The North London Derby between Arsenal and Tottenham yesterday was depression-inducing. I’m therefore going to temporarily suspend my Gooner glum and divert my support for the team of House of HAD instead. Cypriot knitwear designer Alexandra Hadjikyriacou created House of HAD after seeing the football team scarves at a Apollon Limassol game in her native Cyprus and seeking out the local factory that made them. Access to their SHIMA machines meant Hadjikyriacou (a mouthful thankfully shortened to HAD) could programme in her drawings and knock up her first collection in less than a month, according to this piece on Business of Fashion. Hadjikyriacou didn’t stumble into setting up her fashion label blind. She studied at Central Saint Martins, partially going through the MA course before getting experience at the likes of Preen and Tom Ford.

Now into its third collection, you can see the glitched-up abstract knitwear patterns which House of HAD is building up. I’m a latecomer to House of HAD, having only just discovered the S/S 15 collection, but after receiving a personalised football scarf from with my name encrypted into a barcode-esque design, it was hard not to fall hard for what this new knitwear label is doing. Hadjikyriacou carries on what is fast becoming a London tradition of producing innovative knitwear designers – you can draw parallels with with Louise Goldin and Brooke Roberts do. On an aesthetic level, you could also see House of HAD as a new generation Missoni with her specific approach towards machine knits with the big exception being that Hadjikyriacou seems to be able to draw patterns from the everyday – turning the mundane into the sublime – and also feeding off global cultures to create new languages spelt out in yarn. S/S 15 is inspired by a Cypriot sunset drive with images of hot rod cars worked into the knits.

The significant thing about this collection is the deft way in which Hadjikyriacou has already dealt with doing knitwear in a S/S 15 collection. Entirely knitted up in rayon and cut into open-sided tunic silhouettes with various ties and slits, there’s a lightness to all the pieces that fits into the no-seasons mode of buying that we’re heading for. They can be worn sparsely or layered up (in my case with a helpful dose of faux furry Shrimps to combat winter) to create different shapes. Whilst based in London, Hadjikyriacou is maintaining production in Cyprus, rooting her knitwear to this peculiar source of football fandom. It doesn’t look like there’s any chance of relegation with the House of HAD as they’re already picking up stockists like Primitive in London. It’s got my support. And I’ve got the scarf to prove it.