Danielle Chiel.

From a music degree to hand-knit manufacturing.

Danielle Chiel learned to knit at ten. She came to the craft from a music background, and founded KOCO over a decade ago on the conviction that hand-knitting could be done to a commercial standard without a single machine, and that the women doing it could be trained and skilled.

The method she built rests on written patterns rather than sketches. Most of the artisans who joined KOCO had never been to school. Danielle's approach was to teach them English literacy and basic maths so they could read those patterns and work to a shared standard. The collaboration between Danielle and the artisans is the method: she writes the structure, they hold the craft, and neither works without the other.

Under her direction, KOCO has grown to supply global fashion houses, producing from a single piece to runs of 1000 or more, with zero electricity at any stage of production.

Founder, pattern writer and director.

Danielle leads KOCO as founder and CEO. Her work sits at the point where design meets the written pattern: translating a brand's tech pack or sketch into the fifty-page written instructions a knitter can follow, size by size, with no abbreviations.

She oversees the methodology that bears the company's standard, and the training that brings a woman with no schooling through literacy and maths into skilled, paid work. The artisans she works with are craftspeople with skills and agency, not beneficiaries of a programme.