Keep & Share is an umbrella name for the fashion, knitting and research activities of designer-maker Amy Twigger Holroyd.

During my MA at Winchester School of Art in 2003, I developed a sustainable fashion philosophy based around longevity and versatility (keeping and sharing). My idea was that we could get more ‘goodness’ from each garment if we kept pieces longer, and shared them by handing down or wearing in different ways. Upon graduation I launched Keep & Share as a ‘slow fashion’ label, working as a designer-maker from my Herefordshire workshop. Despite being a micro-scale business, I aim to create a model that disrupts the prevalent fashion system.

Over the years, my practice has developed to embrace the amateur making of others, conceptual knitting projects, and research into the impact of making on our experiences of fashion, alongside the core activities of the label. I have chosen to gather my work under the banner of Keep & Share, using it as a holistic home for all of my interrelated activities. I don't always work alone; I receive support from others, particularly my husband Simon. His invaluable assistance is often behind the scenes, though he emerges from the shadows to help me run the Keep & Share knitting tent each summer.

I avoided using my own name for the label in order to create space for others to define their garments themselves, and see ‘keep and share’ as a broad and inclusive invitation. While in some circumstances it is now logical for me to present my work under my own name, my continued use of Keep & Share as an umbrella is a recognition that much of my work is about a wider community of knitters: ‘us’ rather than ‘me’. The historical traditions and communal nature of knitting culture can be seen as another interpretation of keeping and sharing.