Knitting has long traditions fundamentally based around keeping people warm. The basic technology of knitting by hand is still practiced by some today as a hobby, but there is a large variation in automation, ranging from fully hand-knit to fully machined. It is worth noting that even a machine-knit sweater can require skilled labor. There are certain patterns which are easier or even only possible by hand, and certain patterns which are easier by machine. There is also an in-between technique called hand-framing. In this technique, a large frame is used to make the knitting process easier, but still requires a human to navigate the threads and move the machine. You can think of it as a device to hold dozens of needles in place at once, as well as keeping all the yarns organized. This is as opposed to a fully automated machine, which will thread the yarns while powered by electricity. Hand framing allows for more intricate patterns, such as detailed intarsia or fair isle patterns.
Sweaters are an area where the most beautiful and interesting items are actually more casual. Formal knitwear tends to be thin, finely textured, and therefore very plain. These visually simpler sweaters are part of the formal menswear uniform, to be used as a mid-layer under a suit or sportscoat. Great casual knitwear, on the other hand, has a reassuring heft, a beautiful texture, and of course, an insulating warmth. There is also vastly more variation. Shawl collars, mocknecks, turtlenecks, fair isle patterns, and cable knits are just the beginning of what’s possible. Here’s some of the history behind a few different knits.
Guernseys
A guernsey is full of practical features. Unlike many sweaters, guernseys are made of a worsted wool yarn. The tighter yarn allows for a more tightly knit sweater, which allows less wind and rain through. There are useful gussets scattered around the sweater. Under the arms, there are diamond-shaped gussets for enhancing shoulder and arm mobility. The extra fabric prevents the sweater from pulling as much when you reach forward or upward. Around where the neck meets the shoulder seam, there is another pair of triangular gussets to help enhance the air-tightness. This prevents cold air from blowing down the neck. It is also knit symmetrically front-to-back. This symmetry means that the guernsey has no specific front side, and can be rotated to have even wear. This extends the lifetime of the garment, especially in high wear areas like the elbows. The guernsey also is traditionally tubular knit, which means it has no side seams. Sleeves have extended ribbed stitching for practical purposes. You can roll out the sleeve for extra warmth or protective length, or fold them back for a bit of additional dexterity and to keep them out of the way.
Guernseys also have significant amounts of symbolism incorporated into the structure of the knit. These patterns are traditionally restricted to the upper body, which receives less wear and tear than the bottom half. The bottom is left plain so it can be more easily repaired and reknit when required by damage. Some common patterns include:
- Rope cable, used to indicate seamanship or safety and luck
- Diamond net lattice, representing fishing nets
- Wave stitch, made of repeated chevrons in a wavy line, representing the sea
- Basket or honeycomb stitch, for a good harvest
- Nautical objects like an anchor or a star
It's said that different fishing villages developed their own distinct patterns. For examples, Staithes is said to have originated a field of small bumps known as seed stitches, separated horizontally by cables. You may have see this distinct pattern on Daniel Day Lewis in a photoshoot he did for W magazine in 2017. His sweater was sourced from Flamborough Marine Knitting, who still make their guernseys by hand in a seamless tubular knit. However, man patterns ended up being duplicated far and wide, both becasue patterns became popular visually, and due to natural diaspora. These patterns were traditionally passed down orally, and therefore tracking the lineages of various patterns is extremely difficult.
Aran Sweaters
Aran sweaters were a very specific style of sweater that has since proliferated into a broader audience. The very first Aran sweaters, as the name implies, were made for the Aran Isles as workwear. The Aran Isles are just off the west coast of Ireland, and first populated during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. Irish Catholics fled to the Aran Isles and began a practice of near-complete independence from the mainland. Part of this independence was fishing in their unique currach boats, made of tarred canvas or animal hide stretched over a thin wooden skeleton. These vessels were designed to survive the rough seas that surround the Aran Isles.
These factors bring us to the origin of the Aran sweater, known as a geansaí in Irish, and more generally as a fisherman’s sweater. Around the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, the Chief Secretary for Ireland started the Congested Districts Board for Ireland in an effort to turn rebellious Irish citizens into compliant British nationals. The policy was called “Constructive Unionism,” and attempted to demonstrate the value of the British government by improving various regions, including the Aran Isles. In particular, they established a knitwear industry which continues to this day. At the time, however, the main focus was producing practical gear for frequently soaked fisherman. Fisherman were imported from across Ireland and Britain to teach Aran Islanders newer fishing techniques, and along with them came the tradition of fishermen sweaters, like the guernsey.
Over time, the Aran knitters developed their own style and construction. These sweaters were made of local undyed sheep’s wool, and totally unwashed. This meant that the wool was still soaked in lanolin, which greatly increased the water repelling ability of the sweater. The knitting pattern of the Aran sweater also differs significantly from the Cornwall-based guernsey that the Aran descends from. Rather than under-arm diamond gussets, Aran sweaters traditionally feature a saddle shoulder. Saddle shoulders incorporate an extra strip of knitting from the sleeve up to the neck, creating extra room in the shoulders for movement and mobility. It’s a more involved version of a raglan sleeve, which simply connects the sleeve diagonally directly to the tech, forming a shoulder. Aran sweaters also feature all over patterns, not just on the chest. These features persist to today, although they are no longer made of unscoured, undyed wool.
Fair Isles
Fair Isle is, in a technical definition, a method used to incorporate multiple colors in a single knit piece. In any given row of stitching, it is possible to choose from 2 colors: one which is “active” and showing on the outside, and one which is held behind the stitch, showing on the inside. This means that Fair Isle patterns traditionally switch colors frequently, every third stitch or so, because switching less frequently would create a long, potentially fragile strand behind the active color.
However, in the modern day, a Fair Isle sweater refers to an aesthetic rather than a technique. Fair Isle sweaters are often labeled as such for their many colors, but also their small patterns, which result from the technical limitations described above. Traditionally, a fair isle pattern would continue down the entire body of the garment, but many modern versions stick to a smaller band around the chest. This has a potentially beneficial effect of being less visually loud, but also saves a bit of complexity for the knit. It is also possible that this simplification borrows from another style of sweater, the Icelandic lopapeysa.
Icelandic Lopapeysur
The name lopapeysa comes from the Icelandic yarn, lopi, combined with the word for sweater, peysa. Lopapeysur (the plural of lopapeysa) originate from the 20th century, as Icelandic natives attempted to find new uses for their native sheep’s wool. The Iceland sheep is a unique breed, genetically distinct thanks to centuries of isolation. The sub-Arctic climate caused Iceland sheep to develop an inner and an outer coat both of which are used in Icelandic yarn, called lopi. The outer fibers are tough and water resistant, while the inner fibers are soft and warm. Icelandic sheep also naturally produce brown, grey, white, and black fibers, which form the traditional colors of a lopapeysa. Lopi is also unique in that it is not spun. This means that it is even airier than a woollen yarn. This means it can trap more air and insulate better.
Visually, the lopapeysa has a yoke design, and traditionally, also a pattern at the bottom hem and cuffs. In the current day, this is often simplified to only retain the yoke design. These designs generally feature the natural color variant of Iceland sheep. The pattern is said to come from a Norwegian designer, Annichen Sibbern, who was inspired by a Greenlandic Inuit costume. Despite this pan-Nordic inspiration, the integration of the uniquely Icelandic lopi has led to the lopapeysa becoming a proud symbol of Iceland’s culture.
Shawl collar cardigans
The cardigan itself is named after the 7th Earl of Cardigan. This Earl, also known as Major General James Thomas Brudenell, was a British officer during the Crimean War. In fact, he is infamously the leader in Tennyson’s poem, Charge of the Light Brigade. This gallant charge made Brudenell so popular that his favored knitted waistcoat became fashionable. While Brundenell is fairly agreed-upon as the popularizer, historians are split as to the actual origin. Whether it was a custom fabrication for Brudenell’s tastes, or simply a coincidence from a Victorian smoking jacket that had its tails burned off, the fact is it rapidly became a menswear staple.
The shawl collar’s influence spread to the United States on a delay. It actually was utilized as a feature on practical Navy uniforms, adding protection against the wind. The shawl collared shirt was originally conceived and produced as a pullover in the early 1900s, and was made of denim. It became a button-front piece that closely resembles a shawl collar cardigan by World War II. At this time, it had also spread from specific branches to being universally used in the Navy. After WWII, icons like Steve McQueen popularized the shawl collar cardigan as rebellion against the sartorial norms of the prior generation. Traditionally, the cardigan was styled as an alternative to a suit jacket, worn fully buttoned, with a collared shirt and tie underneath. McQueen reimagined it as an open front casual sweater, perfect for insouciant lounging.
Cowichans
This style of sweater is named after a First Nation people of Canada, residing in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island. The Cowichan are one of the Coast Salish peoples in the Pacific Northwest, in turn named after their home, Qu’wustun (“warm place”). This name is fitting, as Cowichan Valley is one of the only maritime Mediterranean climates in Canada, which blesses the area with warm dry summers and mild wet winters. The Cowichan have a long history of making their distinctive knits by hand. The original weaving industry used a mix of mountain goat and dog hair to make blankets. However, with the arrival of colonists and the Hudson’s Bay Company, the high labor, hand-woven blankets were displaced by machined blankets. The native weavers were forced to find a new industry, which for many, was knitting. There are competing theories regarding the exact origin of knitting to Cowichan Valley. Some explanations believe it was Scottish immigrants who taught the Fair Isle technique for multicolored knits. Others indicate it was Catholic schools intended for indigenous children. Either way, these theories both propose that the knitting technique used today for Cowichans was introduced in the 19th century, as the native people were looking for a new industry to replace blanket weaving.
The resulting sweaters combine traditional Coast Salish motifs and patterns with western knitting technique. Like many traditional styles of sweater, cowichan sweaters use undyed sheep’s wool with a high lanolin content for weather resistance. In a truly traditional product, it is made with home-spun wool, and formed into a tubular knit with no side seams. They are limited in colors to the natively available colors from sheep: black, brown, and a creamy white. These colors are used to make patterns based on the traditional blankets and baskets characteristic to the Coast Salish people.
These distinct patterns also made the Cowichan sweater interesting to the Canadian people, and later, the wider world. However, this industry was not free from abuse. Native knitters were often restricted in their wool sourcing to overpriced yarns from their local stores. Meanwhile, cheaply made, factory produced knock offs proliferated. These factors kept the Cowichan knitting industry impoverished. Today, there are still many imitations of the Cowichan sweater. The Canadian 2010 Olympic team was outfitted with imitation Cowichan sweaters from one of the original colonial companies, Hudson’s Bay Company. In 2025, Eddie Bauer produced an extremely expensive imitation, claiming it was based on a sweater from their archive.
If you can, try buying from the original people rather than one of the imitations (even though some imitations are also well made). Look for one of the Cowichan Tribes’ registered trademarks, which are “Cowichan,” “Genuine Cowichan,” and “Genuine Cowichan Approved.” These trademarks indicate that the piece is “hand-knit in one piece in accordance with the traditional tribal methods by members of the Coast Salish Nation using raw, unprocessed, undyed, hand-spun wool, also made and prepared in accordance with traditional tribal methods.” Companies such as Knit With Purpose and Cheryl’s Trading Post work closely with indigenous people to sell their art at a fair price.