The Return Of The Heritage Knit

Maybe you’ve noticed a bit of a chill in the air of late. Perhaps the spectre of frosty winter days looming on the horizon has entered your consciousness, and you’ve put your lighter layers and aloha shirts to bed at the bottom of your wardrobe.

As the cooler weather arrives, your inner sartorial clock tells you it’s time to layer up with something more substantial. It’s knitwear season. The past few years have seen designers take a renewed interest in traditional knitwear, who along with most discerning dressers recognise the practical and aesthetic merits of heritage knits.

In this piece, we present a considered edit of the finest heritage woollens to cosy up with for AW13 and beyond…

The Cable Knit

Easily identifiable by its rope-like weave, the cable knit’s intricate appearance and texture-rich appeal is not purely visual; the knitting technique was devised long before the invention of technical and synthetic fibres, when heat-retention and waterproofing relied primarily on the density of a material.

The cable knitting technique provides one of the most dense and narrowest-gauge weaves, ensuring superb insulation for the wearer. The cable knit also has the added benefits of being robust and durable – its origins lie in the garments of outdoor working men, such as fisherman and farm hands, who required hard-wearing garments to keep them warm and dry in the face of inclement weather.

The coarse, untreated yarn used in cable jumpers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had a certain amount of natural animal oil present in the wool, which provided a form of waterproofing – this was often enhanced by giving finished garments an extra coating of oil or wax. In the twenty-first century, things have evolved; whilst the modern man would see little point in oiling his cable knit, the superb insulation and aesthetic virtues of the jumper are still appreciated.