When Linen Meets Knitwear: The Handmade Slipover Behind Our Fall Photographs
Some pieces enter a photograph so naturally that it feels as though they had always belonged there.
Laetitia von Marées’ knitted slipover was one of them.
When we asked Laetitia, the designer and maker behind @mme_filou, to make something for our autumn photographs, her first thought was: “I can’t believe they’re actually asking me this.”
Less than two years earlier, she had hardly knitted at all. Now, something made with her own hands was about to become part of our autumn story.
The finished piece is her The Blush of Stone Slipover, knitted for our photographs in a quiet blue shade. It carries the warmth and texture of wool without hiding the linen underneath. Its sides remain open, held together by simple knitted ties, while the lace pattern brings a little delicacy to the rustic yarn.
It felt entirely itself beside linen.
A Way Back to Making
Laetitia lives in a small town in Germany with her husband and their two children.
Her mother taught her to knit and purl when she was around eleven, but Laetitia had never made an actual garment. Knitting only returned to her life much later, after she stepped away from something else.
At the end of 2024, she deleted Instagram from her phone. Her account was still private then, and she had begun to notice how much of her free time disappeared into scrolling.
When she stopped, she was left with an uncomfortable realisation. She had spent all those hours consuming, but at the end of them, there was nothing there.
Around that time, her mother-in-law was wearing a sweater she had knitted herself. Laetitia looked at it and wondered aloud whether making a sweater could really be so difficult.
“If you break it down, it’s basically just knit and purl stitches,” she said.
So she began.
Her first cardigan was made from a felting-yarn kit. She now describes the yarn as horrible, but she finished it. That was enough for something to click.
A ball of yarn and two needles gave her a different way to spend her time. There was no endless search for the next thing, and no shortcut. Just one stitch, followed by another.
Knitting eventually brought her back to Instagram, but this time as a creator. That became the beginning of Mme Filou.
Why Wool Belonged Beside Linen
For the version made for our autumn photographs, Laetitia chose Léttlopi by Ístex, a traditional yarn made from 100% Icelandic wool.
Laetitia often chooses rustic wool because she enjoys placing something raw beside something feminine.
The yarn has a clear texture. You can see the fibre and feel its character, much as you can with linen. Neither material is perfectly smooth, and neither needs to be. They seem to recognise something familiar in one another.
The lace pattern came from the same instinct.
We tend to associate lace with a fine and delicate thread. When it is knitted from a fuller, more rustic wool, it changes. It remains feminine, but it no longer feels fragile.
“I wanted to play with contrast,” Laetitia told us.
That contrast is what gives the slipover its presence: open lace beside simple knitting, soft ties beside a broad shoulder, and warm wool resting over cool, moving linen.
Its shape matters too. The sides are tied rather than closed, so the slipover can make room for what is worn underneath. It can sit over a fitted top, a loose blouse, or a fuller dress without pressing the linen flat.
The length leaves the waist and lower part of the garment visible. This is a small decision, but an important one. Linen often carries its beauty through volume and movement. It needs a little space to remain itself.
The Way We Wore It
In these photographs, the blue slipover is worn over our HAMBURG linen top in Dark-Grey-Blue and the SION gathered linen skirt in Dark-Grey-Blue/Creamy Brown Gingham.
The wool brings quiet warmth to the blue of the top, while the gingham carries both colours into the skirt. Nothing matches too precisely, but everything seems to belong to the same landscape.
The open sides allow the HAMBURG top to fall naturally beneath the knitting. The shorter slipover gives warmth without covering the gathered shape of SION. When the model sits, the skirt moves and folds while the ties keep the knitted layer gently in place.
This is what we like about a slipover in autumn. It changes a familiar linen garment without asking it to become something else.
The same piece could be tied over a linen dress, allowing the sleeves and skirt to remain visible.
Laetitia also reminded us to think about the layers that cannot be seen. A fine wool-silk base layer beneath a linen dress, together with warm tights, can carry linen much further into the colder months.
We wrote more about the fabrics in these photographs in Fall Always Brings Us Back to Textured Weaves.
Caring for What Was Made Slowly
Handmade wool does not need to be washed after every wear. Most of the time, airing it and allowing the fibres to rest is enough.
When it does need washing, treat it gently. Use cool or lukewarm water and a detergent intended for wool. Do not rub or wring it. Support the wet knitting with both hands, return it to its shape, and let it dry flat.
With wear, small pills may appear where the wool rubs against itself or another surface. They can be carefully lifted away by hand or with a gentle wool comb.
If a thread becomes loose, it is better to repair it while the problem is still small. One of the kind things about knitting is that its construction can be followed. A dropped or broken stitch does not have to be the end of the garment.
Something made slowly deserves the chance to be cared for slowly too.
The Photograph That Made It Real
When Laetitia was a child, she often said that she wanted to work in fashion or become a designer.
After school, she passed the entrance examination to study art. But she never began the course because, at the time, she did not believe she was good enough.
For many years afterwards, creativity did not find a permanent place in her life. Then came knitting.
Even after we approached her about the slipover, part of Laetitia wondered whether we would really use it. The collaboration did not feel completely real until Rugilė sent her the first finished photograph.
“I looked at it and it brought tears to my eyes,” she remembers. “I made that. And now it is part of a Not Perfect Linen campaign.”
The photograph held more than a beautifully styled piece of knitwear.
Somewhere inside it was the girl who had wanted to become a designer but had not believed herself ready. There was the woman who stepped away from consuming and found her way back through making. And there was a slipover that had begun as yarn in her hands, now resting over linen in a photograph sent across countries.
“A sweater takes the time it takes,” Laetitia told us.
Perhaps some parts of ourselves do too.