Barrie × Damien Hirst: the Scottish knitwear house Barrie is releasing a limited cashmere collection with Hirst’s Spots and Butterflies. Early access through the newsletter is already open, and the official launch is on 14 October. With Hirst, the question has to be framed differently than with other artists. It is not whether art can be sold as fashion, but why it shouldn’t be.
The artist who did it all himself
In 1988 he was still a student at Goldsmiths College. Even so, he organised the exhibition Freeze in an empty building in London’s Docklands. It launched the generation of Young British Artists (Sarah Lucas, Michael Landy, Angus Fairhurst). Tracey Emin and Rachel Whiteread are also counted among the group. The collector Charles Saatchi saw the show and went on to fund Hirst’s famous shark in formaldehyde from 1991, to the tune of £50,000. Hirst won the Turner Prize in 1995.
Hirst, in other words, never stopped at painting. In September 2008 he sold works worth £111.5 million directly through Sotheby’s, in the same week that the bank Lehman Brothers collapsed. It was a two-day auction of his own work only, with no gallery involved. In 2015 he opened Newport Street Gallery in London, paid for with £25 million of his own money. Entry is free, and it shows his collection of more than 3,000 works.
Spots and Butterflies
He has been painting the Spot Paintings since 1986, and according to Gagosian roughly 1,500 of them had been made by 2011. Hirst wanted them to have a mechanical precision, as if no human hand had made them. He himself described them as a way of capturing the joy of colour. Butterflies have been his subject since the 1991 installation In and Out of Love, in which he exhibited them alive. Later, between 2001 and 2008, he used pinned wings to build geometric pictures.
Both series work as patterns, which is why they translate so well into knitwear. Hirst has brought his motifs into fashion before. In 2009 he worked with Supreme on a collection built around his Spot and Spin paintings. In 2013 he designed scarves for Alexander McQueen, and in 2025 his shark and black sheep appeared on Supreme clothing.
The Barrie × Damien Hirst collection
Barrie has belonged to Chanel’s Métiers d’art group since 2012 and knits in its historic mill in Hawick. Hirst is a long-time customer and designed the seven-piece wardrobe himself. As he puts it: “Art you can wear is a great idea.”
The core is zip-up and crew-neck jumpers with the spots, in white with multicoloured or grey spots and in black with multicoloured spots. The Butterflies appear on a hoodie and trousers in white, black, red and green. A blanket completes the set. Every piece is numbered, with 100 made per colourway. According to the brand, the accessories, such as scarves, T-shirts and patches, are a playful nod to museum-shop souvenirs.
The collection goes on sale on 14 October on Barrie.com and in boutiques in Europe, Korea and the Americas. From 10 November it will also arrive in China, Japan and Taiwan.
