We'll Be Wearing These Rebellious Knits All Season Long

We've loved British knitwear brand HADES since it was founded back in 2015 by Cassie Holland. Handcrafted in Scotland and made from pure lambswool, the brand made its name with slogan knits in delectable hues, with the first collection, Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others, made for the ultimate music fan and featuring pieces dedicated to Patti Smith, The Slits and Sonic Youth.

We bought multiple jumpers from the second collection, Inner Privacy, which encouraged us to face our darkest fears – 'Anxiety', Jealousy' and 'The Exquisite Pain' were favourites – and now we're hot-footing it to bag a piece from the brand's AW18 collection. This season's drop, Iconoclast, is available from 18th October and features just as many idiosyncratic typographies, cult slogans and wearable colours as the previous offering.

"The collection extols the idea of being an upender of what culture holds dear, to subvert and challenge the tyranny of conformism, whether that be societal institutions, suburban orthodoxy or performative femininity," designer Cassie Holland says. "From childhood we are instructed that certain conventions and traditions are sacrosanct and that they form the only way to live, the 'Iconoclast' collection celebrates rebellion and apostasy against these received wisdoms."

While the last collection, Alphabet, was fun and playful – and tapped into the zeitgeist's appetite for personalisation – Holland wanted this one to centre around more urgent themes. "I was inspired by a multitude of dissenters and sources, from Lucia Joyce to Deborah Levy’s exceptional memoir The Cost of Living, to my ongoing love of Vanessa Bell and the Bloomsbury Set – people who oppose the societal narrative that there is a singular way to live one’s life, and that one’s sense of accomplishment and selfhood should be measured against it. I derive great enjoyment from the incongruity of classic British knitwear combined with slogans calling for liberation and radical subversion."

Our favourite pieces from the collection include a true blue knit reading 'Cultural Chaos!', a red knit with the tongue-in-cheek 'Cynic' emblazoned across the chest, and a black knit with the contrasting pink words 'Female Pleasures'. Alongside the coveted knitwear, priced at £160, limited edition artworks will be gifted, too. Designed by artist Steve Hockett, the works articulate the message of the collection while taking the shape of protest posters, inspired by France's '68 uprising and riot grrrl band posters of the '90s.

We'll be adding the Iconoclast series to our ever-growing HADES knitwear collection – just in time for winter.