Stella McCartney collaborates with Yoshitomo Nara on hand knitted scarf
A capsule of meticulously crafted scarves draws from the Japanese artist's archival characters, each piece constructed from deadstock yarns over forty hours of handwork in the atelier.
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Stella McCartney has joined forces with Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara to create a collection of hand knitted scarves that transform his distinctive characters into tactile, wearable art. Each piece draws from Nara’s archival artworks, rendered in soft knit with meticulous attention to the expressive faces and graphic details that define his practice. The scarves layer several characters vertically down their length, each with pale skin tones, dark eyes and individual personality, framed by textured borders in coral, charcoal and cream.
What elevates these scarves beyond simple collaboration is their construction. Using deadstock yarns, each scarf demands approximately forty hours of hand knitting labour within the house’s Paris atelier. The scale is ambitious: some pieces extend to considerable length, stacked with up to six of Nara’s characters, while decorative elements like frayed wool collars and embroidered text add dimensionality and wit to the textile. The fibres themselves become part of the narrative, repurposed rather than new, aligning with McCartney’s long commitment to sustainable luxury.
The red wool coat worn throughout the campaign grounds these elaborate scarves in contemporary dressing, a vivid counterpoint to the knitted faces and a reminder that these are tools for layering and movement, not display pieces. The collection exists in extremely limited quantities on a made to order basis, available from 11 November 2026 at Stella McCartney boutiques worldwide and through stellamccartney.com.
Imagery courtesy of Stella McCartney (@stellamccartney).
