An American textile artist told an audience at a museum run by Newham College that his 1960s knitting designs brought out people’s ‘inner hippie’.

Kaffe Fassett, who has created clothes for celebrities such as 1960s model and ex-girl friend of Mick Jagger, Marsha Hunt, said he targeted the middle classes when he revolutionised the use of colour in hand knitting.

He spoke at the launch of his autobiography, Dreaming in Colour, at the Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey Street.

Kaffe started out as a painter in the US before moving to London, in 1964, where he says he took up knitting to develop his free-spirited creativity.

He said: “The Scottish working classes were playful with language and the upper classes had a sense of freedom. But the middle classes were very restrained.

“When I came along and started to knit with colour, I brought the inner hippie out of the middle classes.”

An exhibition of Fassett’s work will shown at the museum between March and June of next year.