French crochet design extraordinaire Sophie Digard produces a collection of accessories focused around the ubiquitous scarf. Although known specifically for her scarves, Digard also produces a range of crochet bags, occasional crochet broaches and necklaces, and a range of hand embroidered and patchwork scarves. Her artistic style is Klimt like in terms of flavor and mood.

Her sense of color, and pattern is reminiscent of the amazing Kaffe Fassett, renowned for his incredible hand knit patterns. There is a real sense of craft honored through Digard’s work, technique, and skill combine to push the boundaries of craft, while modernizing and contemporizing it at the same time. A feeling of naivety never the less permeates her work, with techniques often mixed, with a crochet scarf for example interspersed with tiny velvet patches, or a woven scarf with hand embroidered patterns.

Three-dimensional flowers erupt from her work, with individual velvet petals and tiny crochet and embroidered roses. Her intricate patterned stripes, patches and swirls executed in a rich, diverse and extensive color palette, are expressed through merino wool, mohair, linen and velvet. Unique hue’s and colorations are made up from as many as sixty threads of fine wool, twisted together, resulting in intensely personal color combinations, all created through natural vegetable dying processes.

Finding information out about Sophie Digard, is like trying to find a photograph of Martin Margiela or Banksy, there is no domain named website, and although there are lots of digital and physical locations around the world to buy her work, getting information about her work is an exercise in reading other people’s articles and hoping they are accurate, as there is no main source with which to verify.

There is no shortage of visual resources for Digard’s incredible work, with entire Pinterest fan pages dedicated to her sense of color and pattern, not to mention her incredibly fine technique. Never the less if other people’s sources can be trusted, it seems the bulk of her work is done in Madagascar where she lives and oversees production. Accredited as employing hundreds of local women that supports sustainable development and the continuation of the importance of craftsmanship.

Sophie Digard’s work is available online at the Selvedge Dry Goods Store: www.selvedge.org/shop/sophie-digard