THE JOURNAL
3 MINUTE READ
Five Festive Sweaters For Looking Dashing Through The Snow
Words by Mr Chris Wallace
22 December 2020
In the self-serious, easily ashamed early 2000s, the holiday sweater was reclassified as a woolly winter abomination. The embarrassingly baroque, pumpkin-spice-latte aesthetics or school-production-of-Godspell execution of this genre of knitwear is likely to blame for their status as scratchy hair shirts used to shame a sinner child in Christmas movies. Which is a shame, because the Nordic sweaters that they are descended from, with their spiky woven graphics (where we later found cosy bears and Atari-era snowflake designs), are hella metal. Thankfully, a new generation of designers have reappropriated the Christmas jumper. Our après-ski and après-gift-giving hangovers this year might actually be cool.
01.
The new Nordic
Case in point, the team at Needles seems to have transcribed a vision of the aurora borealis in mohair, on acid. But even with its wild psychedelia and witty play with some of the hypebeasty colours and graphic schema so loved by this Japanese-American brand, this sweater is a perfectly traditional, if sublime, articulation of Nordic knitwear.
02.
Shine on you crazy diamond
Wacko Maria’s relationship with comfort zones is complicated. The Tokyo label knows how to push envelopes, but then it also does a good line in plush items that envelop. This intarsia-knitted argyle mohair sweater sets the tone, ensuring you stay coolly aloof while remaining cosily elevated.
03.
The louche life
The great artisans at Missoni make clothes that could be from another era, when the Italian industrialist Mr Gianni Agnelli might have jumped out of a helicopter to ski the Alps in a rollneck not dissimilar to this one. The 1960s Crayola sunrise on this perfectly slim sweater makes for a wonderfully comforting contrast, like having a spritz by the fire.
04.
Plush punk
The puckish spirit of Thom Browne really comes alive in this otherwise cosy stalwart: the obedient schoolboy staple knitted cardigan. Want your in-laws to read your holiday sweater as endearingly sweet and earnest, but know that (in its subversion, or perversion, really, of crop and form) it is secretly biting its thumb and chanting Pink Floyd lyrics? Thom Browne’s got you.
05.
Zig-a-zig ah
Leave it to Brunello Cucinelli to demonstrate just why, when free of snowflakes and gingerbread men, the intarsia-knit holiday sweater is such a classic. It may feel super snug in all that mohair and wool, but look at those medieval flame-and-pikes-looking graphics – no one is messing with you if you drink all the eggnog.
