Claudia Schiffer's knitwear line inspired by "the dark side of the forest"

Claudia Schiffer in her own design, a £1,150 oversized cardi-coat © Claudia Schiffer

Walks in the German forest with her dad inspired Claudia Schiffer's knitwear collection, called Claudia Schiffer - that's easy to remember. The new label's designs have already been called "it-knits". Claudia, 40, has been in the fashion industry since she was 17. However, she says, "I'm taking baby steps with designing. I have 24 years' experience in fashion, but the technology in manufacturing knitwear is new to me."

Claudia started designing after she spoke at a clothing conference, where she talked about the school run, and how hard it was for working mothers to find good pieces to wear, when taking their kids to school. Clothes she dubbed, "clothes you don't have to think about". Afterwards she was approached by Iris van Armin, a German knitwear company. Claudia says, "They came to me with the idea of designing the sort of pieces I said were impossible to find. 'Just concentrate on the design,' they told me - so I did."

Apart from designer, Claudia also tested all the clothes herself. The mother-of-three wore her own chunky hand-knit capes, boyfriend-style sweater dresses, ribbed cardigans, tube dresses, oversized jumpers and cashmere tunic sweaters, when taking her kids to school. Regarding the use of cashmere she says, "Cashmere is a big passion of mine. It has something classic about it. You can wear it when you are playing with your children, and then go to work and not worry it won't look smart."

The dark palette she chose for the designs was inspired by those walks in the forest, "My inspiration is the forest and its dark side. It's not about the cute fox, more the fox eating its prey, and 'pebbles' lying on the forest floor that could turn out to be spiders." Talking about spiders, Claudia says that she was always fascinated by spiders and that she and husband Matthew Vaughan have insect paintings on the walls of their London and Suffolk homes. "As a child, I was fascinated with spiders' webs sparkling with morning dew, or just after the rain," she says. Unsurprisingly then, the logo of the Claudia Schiffer knitwear line is a spider.

The line has some lovely clothing items, that I'm sure many moms - and not-moms - would love to wear. However, the range isn't for us mere mortals, with an oversized cardi-coat costing £1,150 or about $1890. I can't imagine anyone happy to have porridge/chocolate milk/juice spilled on clothing that expensive.