MILAN, Jan 17, 2006/ FW/ --- Founded almost two centuries ago in the Scottish Borders region where it continues to produce using local artisans, Pringle is certainly a brand with a proven pedigree.

With an excellent debut for its Menswear collection, Claire Waight Keller has given a contemporary twist to the house’s traditional virtues of quality and style, re-interpreting for the modern man the traveling wardrobe of the 1930’s ‘Smart Set’.

The line takes its inspiration from the Duke of Windsor – style icon and leader of an international moneyed elite in an era before the term ‘jet-set’ was even thought of.

Reworking traditional fabrics such as tweed, velvet and corduroy into lightweight, unlined pieces, the tapered silhouettes were sleeker than one might expect and cut to give a fresh feel to quintessentially British sartorial references such as hounds-tooth, flannel and Prince of Wales check.

In the choice of colors also, there was no apparent contradiction between the cool urbanity of slate grey or lavender and the more rural hues of brown or burnt orange.

As an official supplier of knitwear to the Royal household it should come as no surprise that this was an area in which the collection was especially strong: both the fine gauge v-necks and heaver pullovers and cardigans, realized in cashmere or baby camel hair, struck a good balance between elegance and ruggedness.

Attention to detail was very much in evidence throughout with hand-stitching a recurring element and the shirt cuff plackets topstitched with Argyle diamonds made a nice reference to the House’s instantly recognizable motif.

In terms of sales it may prove to be more of a curiosity than anything else but the ethos of the brand was perhaps best defined however by a magnificent kilt: lovingly crafted from sumptuous materials, and combining a real sense of history with an unmistakably British eccentricity.

Pringle of Scotland

Pringle of Scotland

Pringle of Scotland

Pringle of Scotland