Eighties Sweaters Are Back: 2.1. Witty Knits

Section 2 of 2 of these Eighties Sweaters posts had five subsections. I'll try to get them all online while people can still stand to think about warm thick sweaters. 

Historically the first major Eighties Sweater fad that didn't draw on an ethnic tradition started in Britain, with the royal nod from Charles and Di, and was called "witty knits." For the first time in fashion history, knitted sweaters and accessories became conversation pieces. 

Witty Knits included several "witty" effects, such as knitted-in cartoons, lettering, and whimsies like Michael Simon's "sweater with sweaters" where the actual sweater was festooned with miniature mock-ups of other sweaters. They could be quite stylish and flattering. However, elaborate colorwork and decorations could also become damaged and "ugly," prefiguring the 1990s' Ugly Holiday Sweaters, after relatively little wear.

What makes a sweater "witty"?

a. Cartoon images as distinct from geometric patterns. These images could include simple animal and flower shapes, or complete reproductions of actual drawings. 

b. Knitted-in lettering as a design feature. Traditional sweaters were sometimes marked with dates and initials worked unobtrusively into a waistband or cuff. Eighties sweaters often splashed words over the front or back of a sweater, or down a sleeve. Lettering was sometimes chosen in languages other than the knitter's own; several Japanese sweaters feature English words, and European and American sweaters feature Chinese or Japanese words, that don't make much sense. 

c. Trompe l'oeil effects that attempted to make one thing look, at least for a moment, like another thing. Eighties socks were sometimes designed to look like shoes. More wearable, though less witty, were knitted sweaters designed to resemble woven shirts or jackets. 

d. The "sweater with sweaters" appealed to many knitters, and spawned variations like "hats with hats," "mittens with mittens," "sweaters with mittens," and so on. The original idea was to save some of the yarn from other things you had knitted and use it to knit realistic mock-ups of those things, but few knitters really achieved that and many just knitted little repeating garment-shaped motifs. 

e. Little pictures of the modern world as repeating motifs. While anchors, leaves, reindeer, and similar nature-inspired motifs were traditional, in "witty" Eighties sweaters designers worked in motifs like plumbers' tools, $ and other money symbols, animal paw prints...I've even seen a dog blanket with little toilets worked in fairisle stitch, with smaller border patterns repeating words like "Sit--Heel" and "Bad Dog."

Pattern books to look for: 

* Patricia Roberts was a very hip, trendy, witty Eighties sweater designer, whose designs Bishop Richard Rutt denounced for their "deliberate fatalism." Check out: 

and: 

I have the omnibus edition--both books in one fat volume. It is NOT for sale. I show it only to people who are likely to be able to pay for the time these designs take. As a knitter you're guaranteed to find these books a challenge with elaborate instructions in fine print, but knitters have been testifying for almost forty years now that those elaborate instructions are, so far as they've been able to determine, error-free. 

* Ruth Herring and Karen Manners, Knit Masterpieces. Famous paintings charted for knitting into sweaters. 

(They were also the designers of this totally Eighties classic, and nineteen more even wittier designs, in a later book called Knitting Wildlife. Yes, the lettering on the sleeves says "Save the Whales.")

* Lalla Ward, Beastly Knits. Early Eighties with very cartoonish animals, including a batwing sweater with a bat image on it. 

* Melinda Coss: 

"Witty knitting" collections continued to be knitted into the 1990s, notably Catherine Cartwright-Jones's Tap-Dancing Lizard.