Today’s Retro Monday features a chunky cardigan for men. Unless men’s fashion has a dramatic turnaround, I can’t see this style flourishing outside of a hipster wardrobe anytime soon. Something about shawl collars on menswear just feels wrong for me.
If you do a Google image search for “shawl collar men’s cardigan“, you do get a lot of results, and there are some nice examples of Aran style, cabled jackets. But on the whole I really don’t like a shawl collar on a fella.
On the plus side, it looks like a very quick and satisfying cardigan to knit, and the stitch texture looks really effective with the garter stitch button bands. These nice features almost make me sad about relegating this one to the “no” pile in my vintage pattern collection.
Given that my main complaint about this pattern is the shawl collar for a man, I would consider it for a woman’s garment if really pushed.
In a less confronting colour it could make a nice, boxy jacket – although the wearer would need to be slim. There’s nothing like a boxy shape in chunky yarn for creating a yeti silhouette. A chunky cardigan doesn’t often look great on a chunky figure.
So overall, today’s Retro Monday has turned into me complaining about shawl collars for men. Maybe I should go through my collection to find a really nice example of a shawl collar for next week.
What do you think? How to you feel about shawl collars on menswear?
