Sorry, but these knitted dolls are better dressed than you

Knitting used to be considered a rather fusty pastime, meant only for retired nannas with too many extra hours on their hands. But over the last five years or so, the once traditional craft has undergone a revival with new Insta knitting groups and even Hollywood celebrities such as Ryan Gosling admitting they have a penchant for the odd ‘purl one, knit one’ routine. But for Stockholm-based knitter Erica Laurell Hedberg, 41, it’s a craft that has always been close to her heart ever since she was a little girl.

“I would spend a week with my grandmother during the summer holidays. She was knitting a lot – I thought it looked fun, so then I never actually stopped,” she recalls. Learning to knit and crochet when she was just five years old, Hedberg jumped at any opportunity to create a woollen wonder. And by watching the female figures in her family knit classic items like scarves and socks, and her mum even crocheted her own wedding dress, her interest piqued. “I knitted sweaters and skirts for my Barbie dolls and then a lot of things for my collection of My Little Pony toys, like capes and crowns.”

Soon she started viewing the craft through a high-fashion lens, obsessing over her favourite designers such as Sonia Rykiel and Elsa Schiaparelli with her trompe-l'œil. Spending three years living in Paris in her late teens and early twenties at Studio Berçot university and specialising in knitwear, only helped to fan the flame further – her final show piece being a beautiful crochet swimming suit, though it proved to be “not so good for bathing maybe,” laughs Hedberg.

After graduating she ran her own knitwear clothing and accessories brand, before joining the knitwear department of H&M where she’s been since 2010. But in her spare time, she still sought solace in her crochet needle, knitting away late into the night in her “really nice” comfy Asko armchair as her woollen alter-ego Madame_tricot (as she’s known on Instagram) created miniature catwalk masterpieces from scratch and crafting lifelike figures of fashion bigwigs. And soon tiny, immaculately dressed doppelgangers, including everyone from stylist Shirley Kurata, editor Suzy Menkes and other favourites including Björk, Patti Smith and Florence Welch, were born.

“I always loved Haute Couture, especially the knitting, I think that's why I do a lot of miniature dolls of Haute Couture shows. I really like the craftsmanship. I love the embroidery and the beads – I think it's so beautiful,” says Hedberg.

It wasn’t long until her curious creations caught the eye of the fashion gods, in the form of a huge order for 150 dolls from Missoni which slid directly into her DMs after recreating some of their 2017 collection. “Angela Missoni wrote to me on Instagram, saying that she wanted to do a project with the dolls. I couldn't believe it was true; I was like: 'Is this really her?’” remembers Hedberg.

But with one doll taking on average 10 hours to make – she knits each body part separately then stitches them together – Hedberg then spent every spare minute (and summer holidays) beavering away frantically; her mum even becoming her informal assistant, filling the little figures in and crocheting their parts. Luckily, though, the dolls’ diminutive size do lend themselves rather nicely to agile, on-the-go crafting: “I can also crochet in the evenings in front of the television – since they are so small, you can also bring them on the bus,” she says. Phew.

Three years on, she’s racked up an impressive roster of clients, including a knitted commission to create the family of Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli in 2019. And now she’s lent her skills to this very magazine in the form of three specially created dolls based on looks taken from Valentino, Paco Rabanne and Schiaparelli. So what exactly is her process?

“It's the same process as when you are drawing someone; I look at the picture and then try to follow it freehand,” she explains, “The parts you need to be really focussed on is the embroidery and when you sew it all together.” Take the Paco Rabanne doll, for example, with its floral patterned dress and lace collar. “I embroidered the dress afterwards and I also crocheted a little lace on the collar and the sleeves… I love those kinds of things where they have details to work into, and, of course, that also makes it easier to identify what they are and see which look it is.”

And though it’s time consuming, knitting can be incredibly cathartic, an escape away from your screen and an excuse to embrace your tactile skills and use your hands. That’s perhaps one of the reasons why we are suddenly seeing such a rise in popularity. And proof is in the pudding, in an international survey carried out by the British Journal of Occupational Therapy with 3,545 knitters finding there are significant links between knitting regularity and feelings of happiness and calm, along with higher cognitive functioning. “It’s like when you are baking bread, you actually get something that you can hold. It’s really mindful, but also you get this feeling that you have created something...” explains Hedberg.

“With knitting you can decide so many things; it’s so creative because you choose the yarn, you choose the colour, you can create any pattern you like. What's beautiful about doing it yourself is that you can actually create something that fits you perfectly.”