5 Reasons Women My Age Are Trading Dark Cardigans For Light Ones
5 Reasons Women My Age Are Trading Dark Cardigans For Light Ones
I own a brown labrador and a beige kitchen, and the brightest thing in the house is now a cardigan. Here is how that happened.
By Maggie Whitfield, a customer in Cheshire · 4 min read
- Cream where autumn is charcoal, so it lights a room like opened curtains
- A hedgerow planted at the hem, thinning upwards, shoulders left quiet
- Goes over the loudest and the plainest things you own alike
- Wooden buttons and an easy boxy cut, lovely open or fastened
- And the strange one: it fixed my drizzly Tuesdays
The full five, with my photographs, below. The cardigan is the Sabrina, from Manchester Boutique.
First, how I got here. My autumn knitwear has always been dark, navy, charcoal, forest, the colours of a woman not making a fuss. Then my sister June wore something cream to lunch with flowers climbing up it, and looked so thoroughly like the best version of herself that I went home and found this one the same evening. When I realised I could name five reasons it has beaten every dark cardigan I own, I wrote them down, and the boutique asked to put my list up for other women to read.
Mine, over plain white and jeans. The hedgerow does the work. The cream does the lighting.
It is light where autumn is dark
Everything else in the season is charcoal and drizzle. A cream cardigan with red and teal flowers on it walks into a room like somebody opened the curtains, and it is kind near the face in a way my navy ones never once managed. I have been told I look well four times in a fortnight. I am precisely as well as I was in August. It is the cardigan.
The day it came. Cream ground, hedgerow at the hem, shoulders left in peace.
The flowers are planted, not wallpapered
The meadow grows thick around the hem and the lower sleeves, little poppy-red and coral and teal flowers on wiry stems, then thins as it climbs, until the shoulders are almost plain. It reads like a garden border, not a busy print. And because it is printed soft over the knit, the flowers keep details no knitting could hold, dot centres, tiny berries, stems finer than thread.
The hedgerow up close. Pressed-flower detail, worn as a cardigan.
It goes over everything, including the loud things
The one nobody believes until they try it. Dark cardigans only tolerate plain things underneath. This one, because the ground is a soft mottled cream and the flowers keep to the hem, sits happily over plain white, over navy, and, this is the part that surprised me, over the patterned blouses I could never layer before. The quiet shoulders are the secret. Nothing argues at the neckline, so everything below is allowed.
Off duty on the chair arm, after a day over my loudest blouse. Both survived.
The wooden buttons earn their keep
The one my sister June went quiet over. Five little wooden discs, each slightly different, with actual grain you can feel, on a soft knitted band. Fastened up it is a jumper with a garden on it. Worn open it is a light layer that moves like a cardigan should. June undid and re-did the middle button twice, said nothing, and ordered one from my kitchen table, which in our family is a standing ovation.
The buttons in question. Wood-look, slightly irregular, thoroughly approved of.
It fixed my drizzly Tuesdays
The strange one. There is a kind of grey British Tuesday that flattens the whole day before nine o’clock, and I have started reaching for this cardigan on exactly those mornings, deliberately, like medicine. The dark cardigans matched the weather. This one argues with it. I cannot explain the mechanism, only report that the drizzle has stopped winning, and my dark cardigans now do the jobs dark cardigans deserve.
The new arrangement. The dark committee, demoted to second shelf.
June already did, from my kitchen table, which settles the family verdict. Mine has done every drizzly morning, two lunches and a parents’ evening since it arrived, and the dark cardigans have not been out once. I am 67, I own a beige kitchen, a brown dog and one cream cardigan with a hedgerow on it, and the cardigan is winning.
— Maggie Whitfield, Cheshire
Two practical things before you go. There is a sale on at the moment, and the first autumn stock is already going, so the size you want is not guaranteed to wait for you. And the cream hedgerow is one of fourteen prints in the collection, there are darker grounds and brighter gardens, so there will be one that is properly you.
SABRINA | Vintage Floral Cardigan
Every size, 8/10 to 18/20 · Free UK delivery
See The Autumn Print Cardigan CollectionThere is a sale on. The first autumn stock is already going.
Maggie Whitfield is 67 and lives in Cheshire with a labrador. She is a customer, not a writer, and she was not paid for this list.
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