Nastassja Kinski's statement crimson mohair sweater dress in the film Paris Texas. Photograph: Allstar
Fluffy jumpers are hot. Not just hot as in warm, but hot as in cool. This dawned on me last month at London fashion week, when, as we sat waiting for a show to begin, my neighbour kept up a steady stream of complaints about the (non-existent) overheating, and fanned herself frantically with her invitation. The source of her problem was her blush pink angora Jonathan Saunders V-neck sweater. I commiserated, and tried to cheer her up by pointing out that this being the last show of the day, she could soon head home and take the offending knit off. She looked at me like I had lost my mind. "As if! This is the last size small in pink anywhere. I am totally wearing it to the after show."
Fashion has a new status symbol. Within style's inner circle, the It sweater replaced the It bag several seasons ago. But until now, the statement knit has been a rather subtle fashion message. In certain east London postcodes, a JW Anderson windowpane check monogram sweater has the social cachet that a black Amex gives you on Sloane Street, but to most people out there, it just looks like a slightly nerdy jumper.
The fluffy jumper, therefore, marks a significant escalation in ambition from the statement knit. This is knitwear that gets noticed. It has movie-star pedigree, for a start. In the 1940s and 1950s, the 'sweater girl' aesthetic used the kittenish fluff of a fitted sweater as the perfect showcase for figures shaped by the new bullet bras. The psychology of their choice of fabric was cheerfully uncomplicated: the appeal of mohair and angora is in their touchability. You see a fluffy sweater, and you want to reach out and touch it. The look lent a certain earthiness to goddesses of the silver screen that turned out to be commercial gold. The same appeal – of a look that makes you want to touch - is at the heart of the iconic scene in Wim Wenders' 1984 film Paris Texas, when Nastassja Kinski, working in a strip bar behind a one-way mirror, wears a crimson mohair sweater dress. The viewer is put in the same position, in relation to Kinski, as the man watching through the mirror. Tom Ford, a man who knows a thing or two about what makes clothes sexy, used the sweater-girl iconography to subversive effect in his film A Single Man, by dressing the young Nicholas Hoult in a white mohair boat neck sweater. The innocence and allure of that sweater have made it a cult piece – there's even a YouTube video which splices together all the scenes in which it appears – and made Hoult something of an expert in styling mohair. On set, "it got a lot more attention than me, most of the time, whereby it would frizz up under the hot lights and need to be hairsprayed down, because it would get too fluffy. It needed a lot of attention. I've become quite intimate with that sweater."
But sex kitten references are only half the appeal of the fluffy jumper. Twenty years ago, Björk wore a fluffy crew neck sweater on the cover of her (second, confusingly) album Debut. With her hair choppy and unbrushed and the cuffs of the sweater pulled up to her thumbs, she looked nervous and untamed at the same time, like a small wild animal. In this image, the fuzziness of the sweater projects awkwardness, a contrast with the urbane sleekness of tailored wool or fine cashmere, rather than duckling-fluff sweetness.
An angora sweater on the Richard Nicoll catwalk. Photograph: Antonio De Moraes Barros Filho/WireImage This autumn's fluffy jumpers channel both the sex-kitten side and the more awkward side of the knit. Backstage after his show, Jonathan Saunders pronounced his prime inspiration for the season to be "tits", but on the catwalk the off-kilter colours made for an edgy look, not a straightforwardly commercial one. At Richard Nicoll, angora sweaters were heat stamped to look like mock croc, turning the strokeable connotations of soft knitwear on their head. Both designers paired fluffy sweaters with shiny, rubberised skirts for a look that was part sex-shop phwoar, part sci-fi geek. It should also be noted that the fluffy jumper has come into favour at a time when the statement skirt – whether a Celine midi or a Burberry animal print pencil – is at the epicentre of fashion as much as it has been at any time since the 1950s. The fluffy sweater is the perfect partner for a statement skirt.
There is a direct line of fashion succession to be drawn from the Celine mink-lined sandal which appeared on the Paris catwalk 12 months ago, and this season's fluffy sweaters. Those sandals mischievously intended to blur the lines between what is practical in fashion (and therefore not desirable) and what is high maintenance (and therefore desirable.) The sandals were simultaneously practical (flat, comfy) and high maintenance (neon mink at pavement level). And they were simultaneously desirable (catwalk status symbols) and undesirable (ugly to prevailing aesthetic mainstream taste). So it is with the fluffy sweater. It's cosy and comfortable, but it has a tendency to be too warm, and it sheds everywhere. It is sexy, but awkward at the same time. Do not dismiss this look as just a bit of fluff: right now, this is fashion at its most hardcore.
via fashion - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNHasOGkZKzB-hblKY7oBiw6n76K8g&url=http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2013/oct/15/fluffy-jumpers-fashion-knitwear-trend
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