Ho-ho-no! The dos and don’ts of Christmas jumper day
Festive jumpers are a £220m industry.
Caroline Leaper sets out the dos and don’ts
As it is the third Friday of December, tradition dictates that we must don a festive knit to celebrate Christmas Jumper Day – or, to use its American appellation – Ugly Sweater Day. But while we are encouraged to embrace the season and raise money for Save The Children, they are told to “flaunt the holiday knitwear you have been too embarrassed to wear in public for the rest of the year”. Novelty knits are, evidently, a thoroughly British thing, one of our most fantastically naff traditions that has developed from Timmy Mallett and children’s TV in the Eighties, via Bridget Jones and Mark Darcy, to become a legitimate segment of the fashion industry – £220 million will be spent on them before Dec 25 this year.
From £5 to £500, there’s now something out there for every budget and taste – from posh wonderland intarsias to sausage dogs in sequin crowns, slogans highbrow; “King of Kings”, and low; “I touch my elf ”.
What was once uncool became cult again in 2011, when the first wave of Scandi chic hit the UK, thanks to shows like The Killing. As the hipsters reappropriated Nordic knitwear styles as their own, the first official Save The Children Christmas Jumper Day was declared, allowing the rest of us to begin annually adding to our collections of ironic bobbly knits. For 2017 the trends are less about puddings and penguins, and more about classic Fair Isles and glitter that can be worn beyond the season. “We are seeing a trend for less novelty, but more decoration,” a spokesperson for Topshop explained. “Our embellished jumpers adorned with jumbo coloured crystals are performing really well and our wreath jumper with pom poms and sequins is currently the most popular style.”
Apparently, we reached peak slogan in 2015. “The number of Christmas jumpers sold has gone up 32 per cent this year after falling in 2016,” says Francesca Muston, head of retail and product analysis at trend forecaster WGSN. “However they’re still not quite back up to the levels of Christmas 2015. There is a definite decrease in the amount of cheeky slogan sweatshirts, which have reached saturation point. More tasteful apres ski knits are the newest look, as seen on the catwalk at Loewe. They speak to an overall consumer move towards buying less and buying better quality.”
According to environmental research agency Hubbub, one in four of the Christmas jumpers we bought last year was thrown away immediately after the event. They are encouraging us to #Giveaknit and re-wear last year’s efforts, putting all the money that you didn’t spend in the charity boxes today.
If you really want to buy a new jumper, the experts advise opting for something that will last beyond a punchline. “There are only so many Christmas jumpers a person really needs, but if you consider that they are usually worn for office parties and Christmas lunches, you can appreciate that people don’t want to be seen in the same jumper as last year in all their social media photos,” says Muston. “At the premium end of the market we now see jumpers retailing for hundreds of pounds. These classic knits are seen as more of an investment.”
Choose wisely, then, and a Christmas jumper is apparently for life, not just for Christmas.
‘At the premium end of the market, we see jumpers retailing for hundreds of pounds’