Some Things Are Made to Become Part of the Story
On Aran sweaters, Canadian winters, and clothing that lasts
I have a thing about objects that carry stories.
Which, if you’ve spent any time around The Curious Gift Co., probably isn’t much of a revelation.
I read stories. I write them. I spend a frankly unreasonable amount of my free time in theatres telling them. And somewhere along the way, I’ve become fascinated by the things we keep beside us while our own stories are happening.
The mug that belonged to someone you loved. The book with the cracked spine because three generations have read it. The coat you can place in twelve different memories just by looking at it.
And sweaters.
Especially sweaters.
My family has always had a particular affection for Aran sweaters. Maybe it’s the Irish roots. Maybe it’s because they seem almost engineered for damp weather, strong coffee and people who insist they aren’t cold while standing beside the Atlantic.
My dad has been wearing his Aran sweater since 1988. I’m fairly certain my mom brought it home from her first trip to Ireland, and somehow, nearly forty years later, it still looks almost brand new.
More importantly, it looks completely and utterly his.
On the really cold winter days, there is nothing cozier to him than that sweater. It has simply become part of the landscape of our family. I can picture him in it without really trying.
And I think that is part of the magic of a beautifully made wool sweater.
At some point, it stops feeling like clothing.
It becomes yours.
So when I first came across Lost Horizons, I stopped scrolling.
Not because I needed another sweater.
I would like that noted for the record.
But because these looked like story sweaters.
Heavy wool. Cables. Pattern. Colour. Pieces that somehow feel as though they have already lived a life before you put them on, and are quite prepared to come along for whatever happens next.
And then I started reading about the company.
That was when I really fell down the rabbit hole.
It’s also why I’m so happy to say that Lost Horizons is now part of The Curious Gift Co.
A Canadian story with a much bigger map
Lost Horizons itself dates back to 1985, when Canadian founder Katherine Desvereaux began working with knitters in Nepal.
Decades later, that original connection is still there.
In 2018, Lost Horizons was purchased by Francis Dubé, founder of another Canadian knitwear company called Laundromat. The two companies had more in common than not: both worked exclusively with knitwear made in Nepal, both were members of the Fair Trade Federation, and both had built their businesses around quality wool pieces and long-standing relationships with the people making them.
One leaned more heavily into women’s accessories. The other was known more for sweaters.
In 2021, the two became one.
And in a detail I absolutely love, Lost Horizons still works with the original group of knitters Katherine began working with decades ago.
At the head of that group today is a 70-year-old master knitter with a particular love of colour and detailed embroidery.
Tell me that doesn’t make you look at a sweater differently.
Their pieces are made from pure New Zealand wool and handcrafted in Nepal for a Canadian company with decades of history behind it.
And strangely, that makes the brand feel more interesting to me as a Canadian story, not less.
Because I’ve never found Canadian identity particularly interesting when it is reduced to maple leaves and slogans.
Canada is made of layers.
We bring things with us. Family histories. Traditions. Food. Music. Language. Craft. We borrow from the places our families came from, adapt things to the place where we are now, and eventually create something that belongs to both.
Lost Horizons’ designs feel very much like that to me too: Irish cables beside French-Canadian patchwork, Scandinavian influence beside Nepali craftsmanship, all ending up on sweaters built for very Canadian winters.
That feels familiar.
Irish on one side. Portuguese on the other. Canadian in the middle somewhere.
A person made out of footnotes.
Maybe that’s why these sweaters caught me so quickly.
The people behind the thing matter
The other piece of the Lost Horizons story is something I am increasingly interested in as I build this shop:
Who made the thing?
Not in the performative, slap-a-green-label-on-it sense.
Actually.
Who made it?
Who supplied the materials? How long have those relationships existed? If a Canadian company produces something elsewhere in the world, what does that relationship look like?
In this case, some of those relationships stretch back decades.
Lost Horizons works with knitters throughout communities in the Kathmandu Valley, with much of the knitting done from home before pieces return for finishing, embroidery, lining, inspection and shipping.
And when I learned that they are still working with the same group of knitters connected to the company’s beginnings, that mattered to me.
A lot.
Because “shop Canadian” can’t simply mean drawing an imaginary line around the country and pretending nothing exists beyond it.
We live in a global economy.
The more useful question may be:
What kind of relationships are we supporting within it?
Long ones, hopefully.
Fair ones.
Relationships where suppliers are partners rather than invisible machinery somewhere at the bottom of a webpage.
Maybe this is why I keep coming back to story
In theatre, an object onstage is rarely just an object.
Put a sweater over the back of a chair and it’s wardrobe.
Let us learn that it belonged to someone who is gone, and suddenly nobody in the audience looks at it the same way.
That transformation fascinates me.
It’s part of what I love about writing, and part of what I’m increasingly realizing sits underneath this shop too.
I don’t really want to sell stuff.
There is enough stuff.
I want to find things that make someone stop.
Things that remind you of somewhere. Or someone. Or a version of yourself you haven’t thought about for a while.
Things that prompt a story.
That is really the thread running through The Curious Gift Co. Whether it is something literary, something Canadian, something local, or something handmade halfway around the world, I am always looking for the reason the object matters beyond the object itself.
And I suspect that is exactly why Lost Horizons feels so at home here.
These aren’t pieces I wanted to bring into the shop just because they’re beautiful.
Although they very much are.
I wanted them here because they already have a story behind them.
And now they get to become part of someone else’s.
The sweater twenty years from now
Maybe this is the part I’m most interested in.
What happens next?
Who wears it to the cottage. Who grabs it when the first genuinely bitter Canadian cold rolls in. Who takes it across the Atlantic. Who steals it from their partner often enough that eventually ownership becomes a technicality.
Or maybe, forty years from now, it’s sitting on a freezing arena bench watching the next generation play hockey.
Because I know that scene.
My dad in the Aran sweater my mom brought home from Ireland in 1988. My very Portuguese Uncle sitting beside him. Everyone bundled into a cold Canadian rink watching my nephew play hockey.
Irish wool. Portuguese family. Canadian winter.
Honestly, if you wanted me to explain what Canadian identity looks like in my family, I’m not sure I could come up with a better picture.
And the sweater is still there.
Nearly forty years later, still beautiful, still warm, still being worn exactly as it was meant to be worn.
The best things we own gather evidence of our lives.
A little wear at the cuff. A photograph. A smell you recognize immediately. A story that begins, Remember when…
That, to me, is thoughtful shopping.
Not buying less simply for the sake of buying less. Not demanding perfection from every company we encounter.
Just choosing more things that deserve to stay.
And I’m very happy that, starting now, some of those things can be found here.
Small things, well chosen. And occasionally, one very good sweater.