Concerning Vintage Sweaters

I love vintage sweaters;  in fact I got my start in collecting vintage sweaters by looking for vintage cashmere way back in the 1970s. And though I do love them, there are a couple of things about vintage sweaters that really bug me.

1.  They tend to have holes.  I can deal with a few holes, and I’ve gotten pretty goood at repairing them so that the sweater in question is wearable.  But the tendency of a sweater to get holes really cuts its life short.  Many people won’t fool with a holey sweater, puttting it in the trash instead of the Goodwill bin.  And of course the ones that do make it to the bin are weeded out by the workers.  So I suspect that an awful lot of vintage sweaters have been trashed over the years, all for the sake of a few holes.

2. They are very hard to place a date on.  The Catalina ad above dates from 1948 but the styling of the blue cable knit and the red twin set are so “classic” that they could be worn anythime from the 30s through the present day.  (except maybe the 1980s, but with the help of a Bedazzler, perhaps they would have worked!)  Only the patterned sweater really seems dated as a vintage 1940s  piece.