About The North Circular

'The North Circular' utilizes the talents of grandmothers and high fashion models to create directional fashion pieces over rich tea biscuits and local gossip. The inspired idea by models Lily Cole, Katherine Poulton, Central St Martins graduate Alice Ashby and entrepreneur Isobel Davies (Izzy Lane Founder) sees contemporary knitwear exclusively made from rescued Wensleydale sheep, with the expert hand knitting skills of 'grannies, girls. …and a few strong men'.

The idea was born over champagne and cups of tea, after talking about boys, Katherine and Lily would always bounce around the idea of a knitting empire fueled by grannies hand knitting, both of us blessed with talented knitting grandmothers.
(Katherine's gran is now one of our star knitters, she originally knitted the much sought after circular neck snug that inspired the name of the company...)

We wanted to return value to the hand made product, personalize the process of production, rekindle the relationship between the producer and the purchaser - knitter and scarf wearer. The idea went back and forth more as a joke than a reality between Katherine and Lily, until one day we decided to act upon it. That's where Izzy came in as the inspiring and inspired source of the wool - we loved the fact that she rescues sheep from slaughter houses then sustains them through their wool... The North Circular only use the ethical wool from rescued sheep from Izzy Lane's sheep sanctuary in North Yorkshire. There sheep graze on organic land and the wool is spun and dyed naturally within a 120 mile radius of the sheep’s cozy shed where they will live out the rest of their natural lives.

The combination of these ideas created a product ethical in both source material as well as garment production.
As the dream unfolded into reality Alice joined us,she's our pioneering knitter and designer who translates our woolly concepts into beautiful, fashion forward knitted realities.

It was Izzy who alerted us to the fact that the wool industry is on its knees in the UK, due to cheap overseas imports. This made us resolve to fight for bringing production back to the UK ,by supporting our homegrown industries. Every part of our garment is made in here in the UK. This creates a low mileage products, and makes our items even greener.

The low mileage also helped to seal our choice of name,as the wool passes through a 120 mile 'north circular' route from sheep to scourer, spinner to dyer, on to knitter.

We all believe in using buying power to support what you believe in. With us you're receiving a high quality item that is ethical, supporting high standards of animal welfare, it is eco/green with low mileage, minimal packaging, supporting UK industries, traditional arts and crafts. Keeping the sheep at the very forefront of the campaign, The North Circular concentrates on the awareness of the decreasing numbers of the Wenslydale breed with each garment carrying a hand-made tag informing how many sheep were rescued to date.

For more information contact: info@thenorthcircular.com