Your wardrobe is as individual as you are – it’s not just a collection of clothing, it’s a toolbox you’ve built up over the years to express yourself through the clothes you dress yourself in. You don’t just pick a coat to protect yourself from the cold, you pick a coat to show how you specifically keep warm in the winter. A trench coat with a distinctive collar shows you have a flair for the dramatic. A duffel coat indicates a somewhat retro sensibility and so on. A red mac is for someone who likes to make a splash whereas a classic beige mackintosh raincoat is for filmic hardboiled detectives.
This is not to say there won’t be some common factors between all wardrobes: whatever cut and design and colour you opt for, you will need a coat! Today we’re looking another foundational part of your wardrobe: the sweater.
Finding the right sweater is an endless quest: there’s no one perfect sweater that you can wear every day for all occasions! You’ll always be looking for the perfect sweater but we’re going to be looking at a few ways you can narrow down the list and find the right one for you, now.
Occasions
If you’re shopping for a sweater the first thing you need to think about is why you want it: where will you be wearing it? If you’re planning on wearing it to an event – maybe a professional one like a conference, and a smart-casual meeting with friends after work – you have very different needs to someone who wants a jumper to sling on for casual, lazy Sundays in winter.
It’s worth going shopping for cashmere, as having a couple of luxury sweaters ready to put on and style up a casual outfit into one that’s fit for an evening event is useful when you’re in a hurry.
You could also opt for cashmere for your lazy Sunday sweater – it is supremely soft and comfortable. But it might be too premium a fabric for your purposes! If you’re relaxing on a long Sunday morning you don’t need to be wearing something that’s ruined if you get jam on it!
Expression
The other major concern you have to balance is of course how this clothing expresses your personality. If you didn’t care about that you’d wear uniform grey clothes and never have to make a choice when you open your wardrobe!
Fortunately (or unfortunately) we’re not so identikit and so you need to think about what you want your clothes to express. Even simple garments like sweaters can do this. A classic v-neck offers a little retro-formality, whereas patterns, characters and slogans can be a more direct statement.
If you bear these two priorities in mind you should be able to sort the wheat from the chaff and find your perfect sweater.