LONDON — British knitwear label N.Peal is adding some Hollywood glamour to its latest collaboration with Hollywood Authentic, the quarterly magazine.
The 16-piece collection for men and women features styles inspired by silver screen icons, including Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor.
A Hepburn-esque turtleneck retails for $410, while a chunky intarsia knit cardigan that’s a nod to Monroe’s famous Geist & Geist cardigan is priced at $1,690.
“We were influenced by Hollywood’s obsession with 1950s American high school fashion and paid homage to the varsity sweater that is a cultural icon of 1950s America,” said Greg Williams, Hollywood Authentic’s founder.
Williams, who is an acclaimed photographer and has shot four Bond franchise posters including “No Time to Die,” in which Daniel Craig wears an N.Peal navy sweater was how he met the brand’s chief executive officer, Adam Holdsworth.
“With N.Peal’s 90th anniversary on the horizon, I wanted to create a collection that celebrated its unique history and that’s when I started to think about working with Greg on a collection that celebrated style icons of the silver screen,” Holdsworth said.
The collection drew from the photographer’s appreciation of the Golden Age of Hollywood and the cashmere company’s rich history of working with film stars such as Cary Grant and Ava Gardner.
There are several winks to cinema in the collection.
One of the ivory cashmere cable knit turtlenecks, which is called The Blonde, pays homage to a 1956 news article from N.Peal’s archive. “It’s a story about Nat Peal, the founder of the brand hand-carrying a soft white cashmere sweater to the U.S. for Marilyn Monroe,” Holdsworth explained.
The sweaters and T-shirts printed with the word Hollywood in a gothic font are a tribute to Jean Seberg’s role as Patricia in the film “Breathless.”