Crochet and slow fashion: one hook, one live loop

Crochet makes fabric by pulling loops of yarn through each other with a hooked needle. The one real difference from knitting: a crochet hook holds a single live stitch at a time, and each stitch is finished before the next begins, while knitting keeps a whole row open. That difference is why machines struggle to copy it, and why it keeps coming up in slow fashion.

The hard evidence only starts in the 1800s

Crochet sounds ancient, but the first solid evidence of crocheted fabric appears in 19th-century Europe. The earliest English mention is an entry dated 1812 in Elizabeth Grant's Memoirs of a Highland Lady, where she calls it shepherd's knitting. The first published instructions using the word crochet ran in the Dutch magazine Penélopé in 1823: five purses.

An 1844 instruction book describes the hooks as steel, ivory or boxwood, shaped like a fish-hook.

1845: famine relief in Ireland

The weightiest chapter is Irish. During the Great Famine of 1845 to 1849, crochet lace was introduced as a form of relief. Co-operatives formed, schools opened, teachers were trained and sent around the country. Mlle Riego de la Branchardière is generally credited with inventing Irish crochet lace and published the first pattern book in 1846. Emigrants carried the skill to America, and Irish lace was made in quantity until the First World War.

Crochet craft detail: a hand-worked granny square

Why crochet fits slow fashion

Kate Fletcher used the phrase slow fashion in The Ecologist in 2007. It sits inside the wider slow movement and asks for respect for people, for animals, for the environment. Crochet answers each point in practical terms:

  • Made slowly by hand. There is no fast version.
  • Any yarn. Cotton or linen, wool, or old yarn unravelled and reused.
  • Undo and redo. Frogging a piece costs nothing; a worn cuff gets a new crocheted edge.

Two runway returns

On February 20, 2011, Christopher Kane opened his fall 2011 show with crochet that Vogue's Tim Blanks compared to "the kind of traditional craftsy throw you might see on a rec room sofa." On September 21, 2023, at Moschino's spring 2024 show, the stylist Gabriella Karefa-Johnson pulled a granny-square skirt out of the archive.

By March 2025 Vogue's eight spring trends included one called crafty minimalism. The three things it named: texture, fringe, crochet.

Before you buy

Fast fashion imitates the look on knitting machines. It photographs the same and feels different: machine stitches are perfectly even, hand crochet has small variations in tension. For wearing it in summer, see crochet summer styling. For the other natural summer fabric, see linen season.

"One live loop at a time. Two hundred years and the craft hasn't found a shortcut." — Guushu Design Team