Recycled Braided Knit Scarf

A big cable-knit scarf is one of winter's genuine pleasures — the kind you can wind round two or three times and disappear into on a cold day. Ours is knitted in Italy on a wide gauge with a thick, chunky yarn, generously cut at 175cm by 35cm, so there's plenty of length to wrap and loop and still have it hang.

What makes it is the yarn. It's a blend of 40% Better Cotton Initiative cotton and 60% recycled content — and that 60% is the interesting part, spun from three kinds of waste that would otherwise be thrown out: offcuts from weaving and knitting mills, post-consumer clothing, and recycled plastic bottles. Because a good part of it uses pre-dyed offcuts, the yarn doesn't need re-dyeing, which saves a striking amount per piece: on average around 33 litres of water and 2.6kW of electricity for each garment in the collection, and it keeps those offcuts out of the incinerator where they'd usually end up.

The braided cable pattern gives it real texture and substance — it's a scarf with weight to it, soft and warm around the neck, made to be lived in through the coldest months. Long enough and wide enough to bundle right up into when the temperature drops. A cream like this is the easy neutral: it lifts a dark coat, warms up against navy, grey and black, and works over everything from a knit to tailoring — the kind of piece you reach for all winter and keep going back to.