Skye by Brora brings youthful edge to Scottish cashmere heritage

The sharpest move in Skye by Brora is not the cashmere. It is the price tag beside it: a £95 organic cotton shirt, then a run of pieces topping out at £225 for an asymmetric cotton jacket, an organic cotton and lace dress, and a cotton sailor jacket. That spread tells you exactly what Brora is trying to do. This is heritage dressing stripped of some of its old heaviness, with younger shoppers in mind and enough polish left in the seams to keep the parent brand credible.

Skye began as a 30th-anniversary project in 2023, when Victoria Stapleton asked her daughters, Jesse Pilkington and Lola Pilkington, to co-design a limited-edition collection. It has since grown into a sister brand that Brora says will launch an exclusive collection every season. The name comes from the Isle of Skye in Scotland, and the mood follows the name: softer, breezier, and a little more romantic than the mainline. Where Brora leans on its Scottish cashmere authority, Skye pushes shorter hemlines, edgier silhouettes, and references to Edwardian lace, crochet, and lingerie-inspired knitwear.

That shift is the whole point. Brora was founded in March 1993 by Victoria Stapleton and built its reputation on cashmere and tweed rooted in longstanding Scottish textile manufacturing. The brand says its cashmere is made in one of the oldest mills in the Scottish Borders, and that one garment can involve more than 50 processes and as many as 37 people. Skye borrows that credibility but trims the formality. The assortment stretches past knitwear into cotton, denim, and lace, with sailor shorts, a parachute dress, a lace knit cardigan, and a cotton crochet sundress all making the case that Brora’s DNA can survive a wardrobe reset.

The commercial logic is easy to see. Brora operates nine UK stores and a New York flagship on Madison Avenue, so the audience is already broader than a niche cashmere label. Reporting around the launch puts the parent brand at about £20 million in annual revenue, while Skye is already being linked to roughly £1 million in 2025 revenue. That makes Skye less like a side project and more like a growth engine. If it lands, Brora gets a cleaner route to women in their 20s and 30s without forcing the main line to chase youth at any cost.

Still, the split comes with risk. The more Skye leans into lace trim, cropped hems, and cotton separates, the less it looks like Brora and the more it risks becoming its own thing entirely. Right now, that tension is the appeal. Skye feels like a smart expansion because it respects the craft-heavy core while loosening the silhouette enough for a younger wardrobe. That balance is hard to pull off, and exactly why it matters.