Whether you’re giving Kurt Cobain or Steve McQueen, this season there’s a cardigan for everyone
Kurt Cobain never washed his, and an auction house later sold it on for over £260,000. Steve McQueen wore his with a shawl collar — brown in The Cincinnati Kid, maroon in Bullitt and navy in real life. And the man who gave the garment its name, the Earl of Cardigan, was a cantankerous womaniser who led the British Army in The Charge of the Light Brigade. Yet somehow the cardigan’s cuddly image persists — knitwear for retirees.
This season, the cardigan has been reimagined as something more fashion-forward. On the spring/summer 2024 catwalks, it appeared everywhere from Fendi to Dior, made of everything from tweed to fine cashmere and doubling as a scarf (ie: worn around the neck) at DSquared2.
SS Daley followed up its hit “Harry” Jasper Cardigan, created for Harry Styles and featuring a pair of English ducks, with a new version in a non-retiring bright coral.
Oliver Spencer has produced a “short-sleeved cardigan” that nods to the 1950s and 1960s. “It’s quite clean, quite Mad Men,” he says. “I looked very specifically at a certain kind of stitch. So it’s aerated — almost see-through. It should see you through nicely for an evening out alfresco.”
“Knitwear in general has become huge,” says Olie Arnold, style director at Mr Porter. “Cardigans are playing a bigger part as we see a return to elegance in spring collections.” Arnold singles out Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli for creating cardigans “from
