Brora’s great country style has come to town this season,  and our tweed coats, chunky aran knits, our saucy wool and tweed skirts plus lacy cashmere tights and tartan scarves are the kind of clothes that are making headlines as the look of the moment.

A long necklace and tailored tweed skirt reminds us of the Mitford sisters and a country chic that is essentially British and beautiful.

As husky jackets and boots in town become a fashion story, fast, we are delighted at Brora with our great biker boots. Team with a floral skirt and lacy tights and become a country boho babe where ever you are.

Harpers Bazaar Style captures the mood of the moment in this months Style File where our gorgeous soft Scottish tweed hacking jacket and contrast trim cardigan feature, and Glamour magazine’s hot fashion pages are full of the look we love at Brora.

So  now more than every is the time to cosy up in cashmere,  be on trend with our aran knits and get ready for what ever the winter throws at us with a nostalgic and lovely set of  cashmere fair isle hat and gloves. Enjoy the fashion moment with Brora, it’s a good one, and we have the winning ingredients.

Brrr, it’s freezing! Now there is a real chill in the air, it’s time to really make the most of your Brora wardrobe. Our shop manager Marie came into work in a pair of lace knit cashmere tights and her Liberty print dress last week and announced that it would now be impossible for her to wear anything less cosy until spring. Try a pair if you never have and you’ll understand how irresistible they are.

So get kitted out, our cashmere ribbed tights are gorgeous too and come in beautiful wintery colours, and look great with a pair of shorts to be right on trend this season. Then a pair of cashmere trousers are the best possible luxed up way to relax, so treat yourself, the quality is superb and the warmth factor unbeatable. Don’t venture out until you are snugged up with a snood and some mittens for fabulous fashion warmth.

Or get wound up with one of this season’s rip roaring Brora success stories, the long cashmere dog tooth scarf for a funky fashion take on keeping warm!

At Brora there is always something for everyone, and we have Hallowe’en mischief on our minds and children on half term this week. Inevitably, some head gear is less than attractive….!

But keep them busy carving a pumpkin or bobbing for apples, in stripy wrist warmers and big cashmere jumpers.

Don’t forget to play our ghoulish Halloween game this week. Catch 10 spooky ghouls hiding on the product pages of our website to qualify for free delivery and for your chance to win your favourite piece from our collection up to the value of £250. A winner will be picked at random every day from now until Halloween.

Make winter dressing a lark for them with our cosy Inca hat and a scarf worn as a bandana.

This way there’s no chance they’ll forget to put them on!

With the grisly government spending cuts the big news this week, we at Brora are doing our bit with some hot tips from our design team on how to make the most and more of your cashmere.

You might have thought it was all over for an old beloved cardigan, but Brora design consultant Issy Tennant shows us that where there’s life there’s hope!

Don’t throw out your holey socks, they may still have legs! Issy always has a project pile, with old things she plans to make use of, and shows us how an old pair of cashmere socks can be used to make elbow patches or wristwarmers.

Make this the winter you gather a few useful accessories, such as coloured thread, ribbon and name tapes, and like Issy you can ingeniously turn something old into something new and very individual.

To make do and mend is a cosy job for a damp dark evening, a pleasure to try out and with the treat ahead of wearing the spruced up clothes again. Or you could make them into Christmas presents and pass the tips on.

As the New Season kicks in and the last of the sale disappears into Brora lovers’ wardrobes, we want to celebrate the zest, humour and steely determination we find running through our customers. So here is a correspondence we have been having with a lady who needs to remain anonymous to preserve her addiction…

Hello Brora,

I have lost all of what little self control I have when it comes to shopping in your sales and placed yet another order.

As I am not, until I win the lottery in the next couple of weeks, at all flush, please would you consider waiving the postage so I can buy even more from you next season. Talking of which, please could you tell me when the new season will be on-line/brochure as I am looking forward to seeing the new colour swatch. I should get out more!

Thank you

Yours happily living on beans on toast but looking very well dressed

From here the correspondence, and her wardrobe flourished:

Hi Brora,

Glad to have received the lovely Cranberry bolero and what amazing luck that delivery could be arranged to my mums’ house, who I was visiting last week.

I wouldn’t wish to describe myself as furtive, particularly as I work to fund my Brora addiction, but the tolerance level of a certain person to the increasingly regular appearance of the City Link van had been somewhat stretched these past few weeks due to all the amazing sale purchases I have made!

Dear Brora,

Our autumnal menu is being devised in order to accommodate my new wish list based on your early Autumn collection. Lentil soup (green Continental lentils, onion, Celery or carrots, tinned tomatoes and garlic). Very filling and cheap. Enough of this and jacket spuds/pasta enables me to secure the ribbed shawl cardigan in black (long awaited), whilst it is still in stock. My three teenage sons protest a little, but never mind.

Next on my wish list is the textured knit cardigan, probably Bronze although the Kelp is also coveted. Me thinks a trip to a Brora store to see the colours first hand would be in order by October. By then Betty’s tea rooms in Harrogate and a Rascal bun will add to the delight of exploring your new store, and viewing the liberty print skirts/dresses there. Simple pleasures…..

Am off to smoke and drink now and dream about gorgeous cashmere clad men, whoops! No! I am going to bed to dream of the Autumn collection.

P.S. Brilliant to see Fair Trade products creeping in, I must sound like a selfish materialistic beast with all I covet, but am also actually quite caring! (And modest).

PPS No lottery win last week, but work started a syndicate which I am a member of as of yesterday, and have bought a euro million ticket for tomorrow, so will keep you posted.

We do not yet know the euro million result.

Simple pleasures and lots of laughing…we thank this fabulous customer for sharing her recipes and her wish list with us…. we love both, and look forward to hearing more cashmere dreams and adventures from resourceful Brora lovers everywhere….

I have just been to our cashmere mill in the Borders to look at my samples for
Spring 11. It was an early start at Stevenage but a beautiful morning

and as lovely when we stepped off the train in Berwick. Thank God for making in Scotland not just because it is the best, but the journey is an added bonus.

All of our cashmere is lovingly made in this Scottish mill

Our beautiful mill in the Borders

It may surprise you how much work goes into making every piece of cashmere knitwear. Here is a little look behind the scenes at the people and machinery involved in the process…

It was, as always, exciting seeing our ideas come to fruition and Autumn Winter 10 and Spring Summer 11 both look to be strong collections with some colours rather
surprisingly we have never explored before, as you will see from this sneak peak of the collections…