Imagine a place filled with luxurious yarns in delectable hues. Where noodles are devoured for breakfast, lunch and dinner, tiny dogs rule with an iron paw and delicious wardrobe must-haves are brought to life for ladies around the world. Welcome to, drum roll please, hej hej Knitworld. Which is kind of just a fun name for our cool knitwear factory. And we may have exaggerated about the noodles and iron paws.

Like lots of things, China is now the world leader in knitwear due to their high-level of technical expertise, quality and sophisticated design process. With Kiki on the ground, we were lucky enough to strike up a bond with two of their best based in a boutique workshop in cosmopolitan Shanghai. A company created by a wonderful gentleman Winston Lan and his two classmates, who found their niche crafting high-end knitwear from sustainable fibres like cotton, cashmere, mohair and wool. Oh, yes please. 

Here, ten passionate workers are overseen by the very talented Julia Zhu in a high-tech, family-focused and friendly environment. Julia started her career in knitwear at the ripe age of eighteen and after twenty years of fine-tuning her skills, joined Winston’s company as a specialist in sweater knitting. Each worker has their role under the eagle-eyes of Julia, from linking and labeling through to ironing and packaging. 

Our favourite thing about working with Winston and Julia is they are the knitwear experts. Like, the experts. We know it looks all cozy and cute, but knitwear is trucking technical and no matter what crazy ideas we come up with or heckling questions we throw at them, they bring our designs to life without rounds and rounds of sampling or any of that eye rolling.

In fact, the first time we met Winston he came to Kiki’s apartment in Shanghai where digital Alice watched through a phone. With their office miles away, they wanted to save us the journey. Naw. 

And what do they like about us? Other than the fact that we are really cool, they love how much we care about our collection - where the yarns come from and how the pieces are made. They also think it’s pretty cool how fast we’ve grown due to all you lovers. Shucks guys. 

Photo credit: Graeme Kennedy