I said for years that blue cardigans were the colour equivalent of beige with delusions of personality. Then I borrowed one off my sister for a weekend in Whitstable in 2019, wore it over absolutely everything including, at one point, a swimsuit, and had to admit I was wrong. Properly wrong. So this is me addressing blue cardigans directly: I’m sorry, I underestimated you, you’ve been quietly better than navy or grey this whole time and nobody told me.
What makes a blue cardigan worth having isn’t the blue itself, it’s the weight of the knit. Too thin and it reads like something you’d wear to hand out programmes at a school play.
You want enough substance that it holds its own shape when you take it off and sling it over a chair, and buttons that feel like they’ll survive more than one winter of being done up in a rush on a cold platform. The good ones have a bit of structure at the shoulder rather than collapsing straight off you, which sounds fussy until you’ve owned one that does the collapsing.
Colour wise, there’s a real difference between a cornflower or a soft denim blue, which does something genuinely flattering near the face, and a darker ink or navy leaning blue, which behaves more like a neutral and goes under blazers without an argument. I own four now, which a colleague pointed out with an actual laugh in the office kitchen, and honestly the count checks out and I stand by every one of them.
Styling wise, this is not a jumper trying to be quiet. Wear it open over a plain white shirt and trousers for something that looks like effort with none of the actual effort. Layer it under a wool coat in the cold months so the collar peeks out, or knot it over the shoulders when the day can’t decide what temperature it wants to be, which in this country is most days. It works loose over a slip dress for something that isn’t trying too hard, and it works buttoned to the top with a collar underneath for anything that requires you to look vaguely responsible.
Good for the office, good for a Sunday that involves a pub garden and then rain, good for travel days when you need one thing doing several jobs. Not good for weddings unless you enjoy being the only one who dressed for the actual weather.
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