Knitwear Buying Guide: Pilling, Weight, and What Lasts
Reading a used sweater well is a matter of knowing what fibre does over time and what it should never do. This is a guide to weight, wear, and the difference between age and damage. We cover the fibres worth owning and three makers who understand them.
Begin with the fibre, because everything follows from it. Wool, in its many forms, recovers its shape, breathes, and resists odour in ways no synthetic can match. Acrylic and nylon blends were sold as practical, but they pill in dense, hard nubs that never release, and they hold heat without regulating it. A little nylon in a sock or an elbow can add durability. In the body of a sweater it is a compromise you will feel by the second hour of wear.
Pilling is the question everyone gets wrong. Pills form where fibres rub, which is to say under the arms, along the sides, at the cuffs. What matters is severity and type. Loose, soft pills on lambswool are the fabric settling and will comb out. Hard, matted pills that resist a fibre comb suggest a lower-grade yarn or a synthetic content the label may not fully declare. Turn the garment inside out and look at the seams and underarms in daylight. A sweater that has been de-pilled once looks thin and slightly fuzzed in those zones, its surface shaved rather than intact. A sweater that has worn evenly keeps a consistent hand across the whole body. Prefer the latter.
Weight is graded from fingering, the finest, through sport, DK, worsted, aran, and chunky. Inis Meain in the Aran Islands works in heavier weights that hold structure and stand up to weather. A fine merino from William Lockie in Hawick sits closer to the body and layers under a jacket without bulk. Match the weight to the life you actually lead, not the one in the photograph.
The fibres themselves reward a little knowledge. Shetland is spun from the hardy sheep of those islands, slightly rustic, warm, and remarkably durable. Lambswool is softer and finer, cut from a lamb's first shearing. Cashmere is the undercoat of the cashmere goat, light and warm, but grade varies enormously and cheap cashmere pills badly. Merino is fine, smooth, and even, good for base layers and lighter knits. Learn to feel the difference blind and you will rarely be fooled.
Moth damage is the one flaw you cannot repair away. Look for small, irregular holes with no clean edge, often clustered near cuffs and collars where oils gather. Check the underarms and inside folds. A single hole may be snagging. Several small holes in a cluster mean larval feeding, and where there is feeding there may be eggs. Freeze anything suspect for seventy-two hours before it enters your wardrobe.
Andersen-Andersen out of Denmark, founded in 2009, make dense five-gauge wool sweaters on old machines, the kind built for fishermen and slow to give up. William Lockie has worked in the Scottish Borders since 1874. Inis Meain has knitted in Galway since 1976. These are names worth seeking on a label, because they signal yarn and construction chosen to survive decades. That is precisely what makes them worth buying secondhand.
A good sweater improves. It softens, it settles, it becomes yours. The trick is buying one that had somewhere good to start.
Why buy pre-loved
Good knitwear reveals itself over time. A merino or lambswool sweater that has been worn a season or two has already told you whether it pills, whether it holds shape, whether the seams hold. You are buying proof rather than promise. Natural fibres also soften with wear, so a used Shetland or cashmere piece often feels better than the same garment new off the shelf. And the makers worth owning, William Lockie, Inis Meain, Andersen-Andersen, hold their value and their structure for decades, which means the secondhand market is where the genuine quality quietly circulates.