My winter jumpers weigh more than my shopping. This is the one that ended that
My winter jumpers weigh more than my shopping. This is the one that ended that
Six things the Velvo gets right that winter jumpers get wrong, from a woman who does not review knitwear.
Pat Holloway · Customer · Leeds · 5 min read
Let me be plain about who is talking. I am Pat, I am 68, I live in Leeds, and I have never in my life sat down to write about a jumper. What I have done is spend fifty winters inside the heavy kind, the ones that weigh a bag of sugar, itch at the collar, and make you feel dressed for a trawler. So this is not a review. It is a woman who was wrong about a jumper, saying so.
The one I am writing about is called the Velvo, from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now. I first saw it in the queue at the tip, of all the glamorous places, and when the boutique later asked if they could put my letter up for others to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.
A blue Fair Isle, proper Fair Isle, worn by a woman slinging bags of hedge clippings into a skip while looking like the cover of a countryside magazine. Read on.
Here is what fifty winters taught me. Warm jumpers come in two piles. The heavy pile, which keep you warm the way a sandbag would, and punish your shoulders for it by teatime. And the pretty pile, thin decorative things that photograph well and surrender at the first proper frost.
Warm but miserable, or lovely but freezing. Those were the winter options, and I had done my years in both.
The Velvo is the first jumper I have owned that is neither, and having worn it most days for a fortnight, I can tell you it comes down to six things.
The day it came. I ordered it sceptically. I apologised to it within the week.
Warm without the weight
This is the part I did not believe until I wore it. It is a proper knit, you can see the stitches and feel the soft fuzz of it, but it is light enough to forget you have it on. A full afternoon of errands, no shoulder ache, no peeling it off with relief at the door. The warmth stays. The sandbag feeling has gone.
Warm as my heaviest jumper at half the weight. I wore it gardening all afternoon and forgot it was on.
Sheila M., SkiptonSoft, not itchy, including the collar
The collar is where jumpers betray you. This one is soft all the way round, no prickle at the neck, no scratching through the day, nothing that needs a shirt underneath as a peace treaty. I wear the shirt underneath anyway, but as a choice, which is a different thing entirely.
I am the itchiest woman in Yorkshire and I wore this against bare arms with no complaints. That has never happened.
Brenda T., OtleyThe yoke does the dressing
The pattern circles the shoulders, little rust tulips, a gold wave, a row of green sprigs, all knitted in with proper stitches, sitting up near your face where pattern earns its keep. The rest stays calm blue with tiny cream flecks. So people look at you, then the yoke, then back at you, and the whole outfit gets the credit for what one jumper did.
The yoke up close. The little rust tulips are my favourites. Knitted, not printed.
The striped-shirt trick works for anyone
I copied this from the woman at the tip, button for button. A blue and white striped shirt underneath, collar peeking out at the neck, cuff folded back over the jumper sleeve. It takes eight seconds, looks like a magazine did it, and turns the same jumper into a second outfit entirely. My daughter has photographed me. Voluntarily.
The whole trick, laid out the night before. Eight seconds of styling, all the credit.
The ribbing holds its shape
Full easy sleeves gather into proper ribbed cuffs, and the ribbed hem sits where it is put, so the jumper looks as intentional at four o’clock as it did at nine. No bagging at the wrists, no drooping at the hip, none of that end-of-day surrender the heavy pile always staged.
Washed and worn weekly for a month and the cuffs still snap back. My expensive one from town never managed that.
Kathleen H., WetherbyThe blue is a workhorse
It is a soft denim-ish blue, not navy, not baby blue, and it goes with everything I own. Jeans for the tip, grey trousers for church, cream cords for best. One jumper, the whole diary. The heavy pile never managed more than one outfit each, which is how the drawer got so heavy in the first place.
Folded by the door, between engagements. It has more bookings than I do.
The Velvo, against the jumpers you have been buying
You can find a winter jumper for forty-odd pounds anywhere. I know, because I own a drawer of the evidence. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Heavy as a sandbag by teatime
Itchy at the collar, shirt required
Pattern everywhere or nowhere
Cuffs bagged out by the first wash
One outfit each, drawer full of them
Properly warm, light as a cardigan
Soft all the way round, no prickle
Knitted yoke up where it earns its keep
Ribbed cuffs and hem that snap back
One jumper, the whole diary
About the price
The Velvo is £39.95 at the moment, down from £80.00.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that there is a sale on now and the first autumn stock is already going. What I can tell you from my side is that half price is usually where I start asking what is wrong with something, and a fortnight of near-daily wear has not found it.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.
Where it lives between wears, with the shirt on standby. The heavy pile has noticed.
If your winter jumpers weigh more than your shopping, and there is a cold snap, a school run or even a trip to the tip anywhere in your future, this is the one I would hand you myself, while your size is still there. Stop dithering and go and look.
Pat
VELVO | Classic Vintage Knit Jumper
- Proper knitted Fair Isle yoke, rust tulips and a gold wave
- Warm without the weight, light enough to forget
- Soft and not itchy, even at the collar
- Ribbed cuffs and hem that hold their shape
- Denim-ish blue that goes with the whole diary
- Part of the Fair Isle collection · UK 6/8 to 22/24
- Free UK delivery
Sale on now. The first autumn stock is already going.