What makes a sweater "eighties"? The true answer is: having been made in the 1980s. That decade saw almost every style of sweater that's ever been invented in the spotlight of fashion.
One exception is the Ugly Holiday Sweater with a dozen or more little pictures knitted in different brilliant colors, often cotton-ramie, with lots of little knots inside, embroidery, sequins, beads and sometimes bells or rolling eyes. Those whimsical sweaters could become ugly when the colors faded and ran together, the embroidery frayed, and the sequins came off, which often started at the first washing--yet the sweaters remained warm and comfortable, so people continued to wear them, with enough sense of irony to have declared "National Ugly Sweater Days" and Ugly Sweater Contests. Though prefigured by some elaborate pictorial designs of the 1980s, the Ugly Holiday Sweater was a fad of the early 1990s. If you find an ugly holiday sweater in mint condition you might get away with counting it as an Eighties Sweater look, but celebrating the ugly effects time had on these sweaters is a twenty-first century thing.
This series will consider some authentic Eighties Sweaters trends to look for in consignment shops and, if you're lucky enough to be or know a knitter, to knit. I'll describe each one in the order in which I remember its appearance.
I. That Earth Mama Look That Grew Out of the Mid-Seventies...
It stayed around into the early eighties. Hippies revived "folksy, earthy, peasant" looks in the 1970s; in the U.S. the Bicentennial in 1976 inspired a trend for "Americana"--more often Victorian or Edwardian than Colonial styles. Part of this trend was an interest in "folk knitting." Most of the colder climates on Earth have inspired people to develop a distinctive style of "folk knitting," but, ironically, knitted sweaters were considered either underwear or at best work gear. Historical specimens of knitting include more sock tops than sweaters. Nevertheless, throughout the Eighties knitters reinvented "folk knitting" techniques into the hand-knitted sweater look.
It is important to note that, although these styles are identified with different cultures, in Eighties sweaters cultural appropriation was never considered a bad thing. Most traditional sweater patterns of the past were simplified for faster knitting in any case. You can wear any traditional-pattern-inspired American sweater as an Eighties Sweater.
1. Guernsey
This little island in the English Channel was regarded as the home of the first sweater patterns on record. In many languages the word for a modern-style sweater sounds like "Guernsey." In English, the distinction between place and garment came to be marked by calling the sweater style "gansey."
Official gansey patterns exist for many of the sea and canal towns of Europe. There is, nevertheless, photographic evidence that knitters did not keep knitting the same things over and over. Sweaters that featured the official hometown pride stitch pattern often also showed additional patterns knitters had worked out for themselves or copied from other people's ganseys. Alice Starmore described her aunts reminiscing about having stared at sailors "to pinch the patterns" of their sweaters, being teased about whether they were looking at the sweaters or the young men. Traditional ganseys were made of very lightweight yarn worked very tightly. Eighties ganseys usually show simpler patterns, and in different combinations, than old photographs show.
What makes a sweater a "gansey"?
a. In most places, ganseys were knitted in one color. Where they were seen as underwear, the color was usually natural white. (The gansey was usually worn over a cotton or linen shirt, under an outer shirt and/or jacket and/or coat. Still, it was made of wool, and undyed white wool is less prickly than dyed wool.) Where ganseys were seen as shirts, the color was usually dark blue, sometimes red. Fair Isle, the Faroes, and Canada were exceptions; gansey styles knitted there traditionally featured multicolor designs.
b. In most places, ganseys were made of wool. Greece was an exception; Greek fishermen's sweaters, a newer style, were sometimes made of thick cotton.
c. In most places, ganseys were made of as light a yarn, knitted at as tight a gauge, as the knitter could manage. The Aran islands were an exception; Aran geansai were sometimes made of wool as bulky as modern blanket yarn.
d. Many old ganseys had a long lower edge, called a "skirt," that was not always ribbed or shaped, but stuffed down into trousers. Bands of ribbing or other textured stitch patterns are almost necessary on today's pullover sweaters, to control the tendency of most knitted fabric to roll. Old ganseys were shaped by sweat, seawater, trousers and belt, and the almost necessary feature was that they be long enough not to shrink up above the wearer's waist when soaked. A minority of Eighties sweaters copied this "skirt" or peplum style.
e. Early ganseys were knitted on long double-pointed needles, all in one piece, without seams--a very graceful style to master, if you can. Waists were never shaped until the wool got wet and shrank to the wearer's body. Underarms were shaped with a diamond-shaped gusset. Sleeves were started from the top and knitted down to the wrist, so damaged cuffs could be cut off and replaced. Neckbands were high and tight; at least one old fisherman stated on record that the sweaters his mother used to make had such tight collars that they pulled the skin off his ears. Ear-skinning turtlenecks are optional, though common in old photos; in any case, real ganseys have snug round necklines.
f. Early ganseys were worn almost exclusively by men, though knitted almost exclusively by women. (Men knitted, but what they traditionally knitted were fishing nets. Women took pride in making all their families' clothes.) Some of the traditional designs form horizontal lines that are unflattering to most women. In the early twentieth century, when sweaters became part of women's fashions, the code of official hometown patterns was quickly lost--probably for this reason.
Gansey pattern books to look for:
* Gladys Thompson, Patterns for Guernseys Jerseys and Arans, is the classic study of traditional gansey patterns. It was not written for beginning knitters who want to follow a fully printed pattern. It was written for experienced amateur designers who want to plug stitch pattern charts into their own familiar patterns for making and shaping sweaters. There are lots of notes on shaping, variations, and even a couple of sample patterns for Aran sweaters (which are harder to design on paper since the cables change the shape of the fabric), but Thompson wouldn't have insulted her audience by telling them how to knit a gansey! If you're a beginner, this book can guide your shopping. When you're an experienced knitter you'll be able to appreciate it.
People who bought the Kindle edition also complain that the pattern charts don't show up clearly on Kindle, so if you buy this book, buy the printed edition. I'm partial to Dover paperbacks--much better bound than competing paperbacks are.
* Michael Pearson, Traditional Knitting Patterns of the British Isles, was bigger than Gladys Thompson's book and included some patterns she missed. Like her book, it was written primarily for designers. (I linked to the book I've read. Pearson released an updated, even bigger, edition in 2015 but I've never seen that book.)
* Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, Knitting in the Old Way, is another book for the expert knitter or beginning designer. Traditional samples include several "folk knitting" traditions as well as ganseys, with more information about how to design your own versions of the special shaping and knitting techniques, and not one step-by-step pattern for what Elizabeth Zimmermann (they were friends) called Blind Followers.
I'm not dissing Blind Followers. I myself Blindly Followed a dozen or so patterns for the things I was then able to design. So, later in the Eighties, we finally come to some books that can be used by Blind Followers:
* Gwyn Morgan, Traditional Knitting Patterns of Ireland Scotland and England, was a low-budget production, not reprinted, full of serviceable Eighties versions of British "folk knitting" traditions, including ganseys, fairisles, Nordic styles, and Aran cables. At Ko-fi you'll soon see a swatch for my version of one of these sweaters.
* Madeline Weston, Classic British Knits, includes nice Eighties updates for several Guernsey, Fair Isle, Aran, and Shetland traditions, including a shawl and a few accessories as well as sweaters. Yarns used are much thicker than the ones in museum samples (except for early twentieth century Arans) but still skinny yarns, not always easy to find in colors other than "baby" pastels. I remember the summer Wal-Mart downsized its collection of Luster-Sheen lightweight acrylic yarn, and I gleefully bought yarn to knit several of Weston's gansey patterns, including the one on top of the bin below...
Ah yes, the big-chain department stores regard lightweight yarns as novelties and don't stock many of them, most years. And the things we knit in lightweight yarns take twice as much time as the things we knit with the blanket-weight crochet yarn that fills Wal-Mart, Michael's, Joann's, etc., yarn shelves. But they are much easier to wear indoors, and much less likely to make wearers look fat.
* Eighties versions of gansey patterns appeared in many knitting magazines. A particularly attractive sample, and easy to make as ganseys go, was reprinted by Trisha Malcolm in Vogue Knitting's Very Easy Knits. Some readers complained that the shaping, stitch patterning, and relatively thin yarn make it more of a challenge than what Malcolm was calling Very Easy Knits in issues of the magazine she'd edited. Knitters have been making versions of this simple gansey for years. You'll soon find a swatch for it in my Ko-fi WIP Album, too.
* Well after the eighties were over, Beth Brown-Reinsel wrote her own book on how to make miniature, child-sized, adult-sized, lightweight, and bulky sweaters with gansey shaping and stitch patterns: Knitting Ganseys. She was working out these designs in the Eighties. Few people will know that you used a technique and pattern book that came out later.
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