Watch: The Swedish designer hand knitting fashion’s greatest icons

Knitting can be an incredibly therapeutic pastime. Being hyper-focussed on one handsy craft can really permit our busy minds to drift away from our phone screens, even if it’s only for half an hour, and really focus on the task at hand. And now, it seems the world is catching up to its benefits. We’ve seen guerilla knitters and their yarn bombing, along with the Insta tribe of candy-coloured knitted vests taking over our feeds. What’s behind the big woollen revival of late?

Serial knitter and woman behind Instagram account Madame_tricot – and master creator of our very own Vogue Scandinavia knitted dolls – chalks it up to a certain singer: “I think the sweater by JW Anderson which Harry Styles had on was the start of it. He wore this cardigan, which they also gave out the pattern for, that felt like the start of something.” For Laurell Hedberg, her love of the woolly stuff started long before that though, starting to knit when she was just a young girl after watching her mother and grandmother purling away in their summer house.

After following her dream of fashion design to Paris and crafting her final project: a crochet swimming suit, of course, she determined to give it a serious go and began creating miniscule woollen versions of fashion industry deities including everyone from Anna Dello Russo to Suzy Menkes. We meet Laurell Hedberg and her dog (in matching knitted get-ups, naturally) at home in her Stockholm apartment and boogie away with her little creations.