Harley of Scotland

Harley of Scotland is a Scottish knitwear manufacturer founded in 1929, when Peter Harley bought a former herring yard on Queen Street in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, and set up a hosiery business making hand-framed fisherman's socks and woven blankets for the local fishing industry. Sailing trips took Peter Harley to Orkney, Shetland and the Fair Isles, where he encountered the hand-knit cottage industries and regional patterning of Fair Isle sweaters; by the mid-1930s the company had shifted production toward premium fisherman's ganseys and, over time, toward the Shetland and Fair Isle-style knitwear it is now known for. The company remains headquartered and still produces at its original Queen Street, Peterhead site, now run by the third generation of the Harley family.