At home in a remote Cumbrian cottage with the founder of cashmere brand Brora

The kitchen's convivial, open-plan design was inspired by a Canadian cabin.

Dean Hearne

Not long after the launch of Brora, the Financial Times ran an article on cashmere that read, ‘Brora does wonderful crew necks in black, blue and brown, for £99’. Despite there being no photograph of said items, Victoria was inundated with orders: 'People were calling my home number, which was in the paper, to order a £99 cashmere jumper.'

In 1995, she opened her first shop at the bottom of the King's Road, SW3. 'I knew nothing about shopkeeping,' she says with a laugh. 'I was in my late twenties and used to park my Vespa in front of the window display. You could barely tell it was a shop.' Inside, the place was constructed on a shoestring - tweed curtains and trestle tables stacked with jewel-coloured jumpers. The office of Rolling Stones bass guitarist Bill Wyman was upstairs and there was always a stream of ‘rock and roll oddities’ going in and out. Brora still has this premises, though it is now one of 10 stores - and a 'little bit more pulled-together'.With favourite Brora pieces.

Victoria at home with favourite Brora pieces.

Dean Hearne

'Do you remember my mother made you a rag rug for the first shop?' says Issy. Said mother is the celebrated botanical artist Emma Tennant (featured in House & Garden in June 2023), who downs her paintbrushes in the winter to make rugs. 'Victoria started coming to stay with us in the Scottish Borders when she had mill meetings,' Issy says, explaining how she got involved in the company. 'We would chat non-stop over supper about clothes. One day she said, "Look, would you like to sit in on the meetings as a sort of sounding board?" We used to take in all sorts of random bits of inspiration from vintage shops and from our parents' and grandparents' wardrobes.' That Issv's maternal grandmother was Deborah ‘Debo’ Mitford makes this a particularly tantalising grain of information.

A relaxed lunch with family and friends.

Dean Hearne

'A little vintage cropped cardigan was one of the first ideas Issy brought to the table,' recalls Victoria. ‘This design is still in the collection today. A black one was worn by Catherine, Princess of Wales to a Christmas event a few years ago. Indeed, the Princess has become something of an unofficial ambassador for the brand. She is a wonderfully loyal fan. Anything she is pictured wearing goes mad.’ Issy and Victoria are talking to me on Zoom from the mill in Hawick, where Brora's cashmere has been made since 1993. It is the same mill in which most of the big French fashion houses now produce their cashmere and one of the last of its kind, with generations of local families working alongside each other. Brora's tweeds and woollens are mainly woven in mills around the British Isles. 'This is a crucial part of our DNA.' says Victoria.

Around the same time that the brand was taking off in the late 1990s, Victoria discovered a pair of railway cottages in Cumbria. A couple of hours' drive from the cashmere mill, these are on a part of the family farm that had been sold off after her grandfather's death. Situated down a track to the River Eden, with the Carlisle to Leeds railway line running almost through the garden, the buildings had no electricity and were in need of a lot of love. 'My father and I took on this slightly mad project together,' she says. 'He was a real visionary. He had seen a fishing lodge in Canada with a conjoined central living space, which we reimagined here. It's an amazingly convivial place for big gatherings.'

Victoria with her husband Johnny and whippet Midge on the bridge over the railway line that runs through their land. Johnny bought his Brora tweed jacket from Victoria's studio - the forerunner of her first shop - before they were a couple. 'I won't let him throw it away for sentimental reasons, despite there being more holes than jacket,' she says.

Dean Hearne

It was also around this time that Victoria met her husband Johnny Pilkington, a successful photographer. He was recently separated, with two young daughters from his previous marriage. 'As the final lick of paint went on the walls of the Cumbria house, I found out I was pregnant with our eldest daughter, Jesse. My dreams of a rave in the hills were shattered - probably a good thing,' she laughs.

Theirs is now a large blended family with five daughters - Hermione, 35, and Allegra, 32, from Johnny's first marriage, and Jesse, 26, Nancy, 24, and Lola, 22 - and (so far) three grandchildren. The girls have, at various points, taken on creative roles at the company: Allegra has shot advertising campaigns, while Jesse and Lola produce the diffusion line Skye by Brora, which is aimed at a younger demographic. Victoria's sisters have houses nearby, and time in Cumbria is spent gathering en masse to swim in the river, fish and cook outside. 'When we're here, everyone grows in spirit,' says Victoria.

Victoria (centre) and husband Johnny (right) with (from left) her stepdaughter Allegra, Tom and Totty Lowther and their son Harry, and William Plumptre, preparing foraged mushrooms.

Dean Hearne

When I visit, the neighbours have been invited for lunch. Designer Totty Lowther and her husband Tom -a 'cousin of a cousin' - arrive. She is bearing armfuls of her new wallpapers to test in a spare room; he has brought a huge wicker basket of recently picked mushrooms. Johnny cooks the mushrooms over an open fire in the garden as everyone mills about and drinks beer.

'We're a picturesque bunch,' quips the potter William Plumptre - whose Anglo-Japanese ceramics are dotted round the house - referencing the multitude of patched jackets and holey jumpers and shoes, worn with a particular kind of British insouciance that still manages to look elegant. It strikes me that this is the cosy, bohemian spirit that Victoria has managed to capture in the clothes she designs. A dichotomy of luxury and earthiness that calls to mind the late Queen in tweeds tramping through the mud at Balmoral. These are clothes that are good enough to be worn long after they are frayed and patched

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