DesignIt Mary Farrin knitted dress and shawl S/M RRP 5.5K

Vintage Mary Farrin — the London knitwear label that had the whole British Boutique scene talking in the late ’60s, hand-knit in Gozo, Malta, until the label closed in 1990. Genuinely rare.Mary Farrin was a London knitwear designer who opened her boutique on South Molton Street during the late 1960s, right at the height of the British Boutique movement — the same scene that produced names like Mary Quant and Biba. She became known as something of a “Queen of the Knits,” and her pieces reportedly included Angora knits supplied to Christian Dior.What made her distinctive was Malta. Rather than manufacturing in England long-term, Farrin began production in Gozo, Malta, building a cottage industry there through the 1970s  — so her knits carry a genuinely unusual, artisanal quality for the era, often with intricate open-knit or crochet work that reads more handmade than mass-produced. Production wound down through the 1980s and the label closed in 1990, which is part of why pieces are considered rare today — she was never a mass-market name, and Gozitan-made garments in good condition are genuinely hard to find.