Araminta Campbell is an innovative Edinburgh-based textiles company that embraces traditional craftsmanship and timeless design in a powerful expression of Scotland’s natural beauty and weaving heritage.
Working with family-run artisan mills in Scotland and in-house weavers, the brand handcrafts its Signature Collection of luxurious one-off British alpaca accessories at its flagship studio in Edinburgh. It also offers Minta, a contemporary limited-edition interiors line; Heritage, its newest limited-edition collection; and Custom, its tweed and tartan service that creates bespoke designs and upholstery for private and commercial clients across the world, including hotels such as The Fife Arms.
The brand’s mission is to create articles of beauty that stand the test of time, as well as helping to sustain the traditional skills, rural suppliers and talented craftspeople of the British Isles. At a time when origin, story and traceability have never been more valued, Araminta Campbell is a shining exponent, transcending fast fashion, preserving centuries-old Scottish craftsmanship and using ethically sourced, beautiful materials to create pieces that are designed to be handed down through the generations. ‘Our hero moment is to be re-establishing the value of textiles – once considered more valuable than gold – through our collections,’ says the brand’s CEO & Creative Director, Araminta Campbell.
The past year has seen the launch of Araminta Campbell’s new limited-edition Heritage collection reflecting those elements of the brand’s earlier work of which it is most proud. ‘Combining tartan design from our custom service, artisan Scottish mill-weaving from our Minta collection and handwoven, carefully sourced British alpaca from our Signature collection, Heritage is an ode to our brand and to Scottish textiles,’ she says.
Araminta Campbell herself grew up in Aberdeenshire and the colours and textures of the landscape surrounding her family home are a pervasive influence in her design work. The Heritage collection tartan has echoes of clear blue skies glimpsed through the dappled leaves of beech woodland – and the rest of the collection is similarly not only inspired but nourished by nature. Araminta skilfully used a natural plant dyeing process to provide an evocative colour palette for the yarns used in the collection – delivering accessories for men and women that perfectly channel nature itself.
The Araminta Campbell brand claims to show how luxury and sustainability are not at odds with each other, but rather can support one another in a happy marriage. It can take up to three weeks to handweave a piece for the Heritage collection, a painstaking, detailed evolution – involving handweaving from finest, carefully sourced British alpaca – that would certainly appear to sit at the intersection between luxury and sustainability. Only 12 of each design are made, contributing to a genuine air of exclusivity.
Araminta Campbell is a brand that delights in telling the story of how its textiles come into being. Its website is populated with richly detailed short films showing every inspirational blade of wheat and woven thread. It knows the birthplace and names of each alpaca whose fleece is used to make a piece within its Signature collection. It’s all about harnessing nature, with respect, beauty and care – a noble ambition that resonates with today’s conscious consumer.
