Knitwear? Knit everywhere, more like. As we enter the thick end of sweater season, take comfort in the fact that woollens are an increasingly significant part of today’s clothing conversation. Of course, this has been the case ever since sheep with wool long enough to spin were first reared some 8,000 years ago. In recent seasons, however, knitwear has had an image overhaul. Take the cardigan. Once the preserve of fusty, finickety grandfathers, it has been rebooted in luxurious cashmere, tie-dyed and embraced by a younger crowd. Or the knitted vest, once shorthand for the tired fashions of yore, suddenly the hottest item in a man’s wardrobe.

But does your choice of knitwear make you a wolf in sheep’s clothing or mutton dressed as lamb dressed as mutton? Below, we’ve identified five flocks of the modern menswear movement.

Joseph had his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. This bro is like, “Hold my beer.” His generation’s main character flounces through life in his collection of dazzlingly trippy cashmere, which he has amassed after cashing in his Bitcoin and NFTs at exactly the right moment. Now his chief focus is the future of psychedelics. He had a journey that expanded his consciousness and now he wants to bend your ear. Once Big Pharma gets over its squeamishness and finds a way to turn a profit from it, the mental health crisis could be solved, like, overnight. (In the meantime, he knows a guy who is certified to dispense ayahuasca for religious ceremony. And another who can get you toad.) Hot rock burns in a cardigan by The Elder Statesman, he can live with.

He didn’t mean to be this devastatingly handsome. He just had a swanky do to attend and didn’t fancy wearing a tie. And because an open-neck shirt is too informal and an air tie is too defiant schoolboy, he opted for a rollneck under a suit jacket instead. It’s not as though his neck is something he’d want to hide. He has a great neck. An enviable nape, the smartest scruff that you ever did see. But somehow, stick it in a fabric burrow and the effect is palpable. It’s like an alien symbiote that somehow bestows upon its wearer the left-field intellectual heft of the French philosopher Mr Michel Foucault, the tearaway free spirit of the novelist Mr Jack Kerouac and the blue-sky verve of the Apple cofounder Mr Steve Jobs. And it appears to have bonded with its host. As has the party host.

Where does this wearer end and the knitwear begin? Well, the sweater at least is highly textured, but lacking in clarity or definition. Fluid, although roughly a solid mass. Fluffy, let’s go with that. There’s a stripy motif, the sort of residual aura of a line, like a forgotten contrail, rendered in wispy mohair, in jolly, vibrant tones. Imagine a football mascot who gave up the sport, discovered The Cure and got heavily into blow-drying. It’s edgy, but also very, very cuddly, assuming that is appropriate and consensual. There are brands that have this look, and feel, sewn up. Marni, we mean you. But more than a hot item, it will keep you cosy, too.

It seems an unlikely alliance. A knitted vest in a retro patterned style last seen in 1970s sitcoms that can only be shown today with a disclaimer. And the bare-chested trend for leading men that has littered red carpets over the past few cycles. For one thing, there’s a philosophical clash there. For another, that’s got to itch, right? Whatever his secret, however he keeps the irritation at bay – the softest cashmeres and merino wools? A concealed undergarment? Lard, like old-school Channel swimmers? – he is brimming with self-confidence. His knitwear may be armless, but he certainly isn’t.

The shawl collar is an affectation inherited from the smoking jackets of the Victorian era. That they needed a jacket just for smoking says a lot about the hold tobacco had over the 19th-century gentry. Vapes are more this man’s vice, but the habit for a roll collar is harder to shake. No wonder, when this adaptable style of cardigan is at once vaguely formal and clearly relaxed, a timeless classic that’s perfect for the man who is at ease with himself. It was favoured by President John F Kennedy and the actors Mr Steve McQueen and Sir Sean Connery. Add to that illustrious roll call our guy here. Sitting by the fireside, he could spin you a yarn or two, as could his cardie. Over a plume of raspberry-apple vapour.