Cardigans and why they belong in the recycling bin of history

Fashion wants to make bulky knitwear great again. What a terrible idea

Now that’s how you wear a cardigan

Fashion is a tricksy little madam, always looking for some tragically ignored item to pull out of the overflow wardrobe and make desirable all over again.

Take the cardigan. These have been in style Siberia for so long that the charity shop has indeed taken all of mine. With some help from the moths.

And then, just as a clear, cardi-free future beckoned, they are back in the game.

When I say back, I mean they are in shops. And worn by the kind of people who understand the semiotics of fashion and post pictures on social media to prove it.

And when I say cardigans, I don’t mean the prim fine knits that are associated with matching sweaters and strings of pearls. Or the comfy, slouchy numbers worn by Starsky (above, sigh) or me with Dr Martens in the 1980s.

I mean a particular short, bulky, round-necked style, as popularised by French fashion house Sezane.

Objectively, these are quite horrible. Sorry to everyone who has maxed out Klarna to secure one, but WTF. A hot Parisian chick is struggling to make these sizzle. How on earth will a peely wally Scottish person with a hangover manage?

She looks adorable in this cardigan. That does not mean a normal person will

Surely this was in the Gap closing down sale Gap with 70% off ?

One of fashion’s jinkiest moves is to persuade people that they have been seeing button-fronted knitwear all wrong. They must reframe the cardigan and appreciate its element of surprise, appreciate the unexpected sexiness of a knitted beige box.

This works, kind of, with people who are naturally gorgeous and have the confidence to carry off a cosy knitted jacked with the insouciance of Raquel Welch in a fur bikini.

Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC. Watch and learn

The cardigan 2.0 appeals to those who dress for a life online and must constantly wear something new and surprising, preferably with its own hashtag. (Team cardi gathers around #sezanelovers, in case you need some #inspo.)

Influencers and their ilk constantly need fresh meat for their OOTD posts and styling videos. And what could be more challenging than making a dreary cardigan in a nothingy shade of mud look alluring?

Spoiler alert: all that’s required is shiny hair, a satin skirt and a flat stomach.

I follow people who wear cardigans on social media so you don’t have to

Then, when Tesco have copies - dupes in fashion speak - they can get all excited all over again as they pick up a Sezane-adjacent knit along with their messages.

So what of us civilians, with lives outside the mobile phone screen, who need useful clothes to wear to work, on the school run and to the cinema? Surely the comfy cardi, so accommodating, so versatile, so easy to fling on, is our new best friend?

Hahahahahaha no.

The unlovely garments currently filling the High Street have got their by a well-worn route. First stop, Big Fashion’s mood board. From there, via a few Zoom meetings to finalise the sizing and cut the cost of the trim, to the sweatshops of Bangladesh and Guangzhou. Then, before the shops, into influencers’ freebie hauls and onto their social media.

But has anyone actually bought them? Or, crucially, worn them out of the house?

I think not. I have certainly not seen a single one in the wild.

Primark is trying stripes, animal print, lemon, salmon pink … anything to make cardigans happen

Yet there are round necks and clunky buttons across every mainstream store. In Primark in Glasgow’s Argyle Street, the corner of doom behind the escalator on the first floor contains little else.

Every chain has a variation on the theme. Some have removed the sleeves. Others funk it up with colour or print.

But did I meet another soul looking at these forlorn items? No I did not.

The nature of fast fashion is to back every trend going and hope that some sell. These are not selling. Diluted by the cheapest possible polyester yarn and nastiest fastenings, in a forgettable palette of dreary neutrals and acrylic-baby-wool lemon and periwinkle, they will not be full price for long.

Take the cardigan out of the sun-drenched fashion shoot, downgrade the manufacturing spec and shove it on a rail in Asda and its true, washed-out colours come shining through.

It’s a classic example of big store buyers believing the hype and thinking that we, the consumer, wants a watered down version of a hard-to-wear and easily miscoded high end fashion item.

In fact, most of us are not #sezanelovers. We are Sezane celibates who do not care how influencers are tucking half-buttoned cardis into their jeans.

Instead we see plangent rows of horrid cardigans and wonder if Primark has actually lost its mind.

My generation’s grannies, doughty old personages who bought their cardis in C&A and BHS, would not have thanked you for these fugly brutes. For me, it’s got to be cashmere with mother of pearl buttons, or huge and comforting, made of lambswool in a cheery colour, with leather or horn fastenings.

Or worn by Starsky.