The 5th Blog Of CLICmas
From Monday 13 to Friday 24 December, CLIC will feature a different guest blog each day - The 12 Blogs Of CLICmas, in fact! Here is the fifth...
I’ve never had a Christmas jumper.
The closest I’ve ever got to it was when I got a Kickers jumper for Christmas in 1997.
This was my best Christmas ever (I also got a beanbag with the Spice Girls logo emblazoned all over it) and I’m sure my utter pleasure would only have been heightened had the jumper (or the beanbag for that matter) been hand-knitted and adorned with a dodgy snowflake.
Unfortunately I do not have a nanna that knits, and short of adopting one that bears needles for Christmas and mortally offending my biological grandmothers, I’m not going to be receiving any homemade woollens anytime soon.
My true burning desire for a Christmas jumper started after Seth Cohen turned a reindeer print ‘sweater’ into a geek chic must-have in the Chrismukkah episode of the seminal teenage TV programme, The O.C. (see video).
The once-spurned Christmas jumper became cool and can be seen in several guises around Christmas time, except upon me.
Even the big-time designers have cottoned on, except they call them ‘fair isle jumpers’ in an attempt at being posh. D&G have a rather fetching cropped version with a rather unfetching price tag of £250, and I'm quite liking this Alexander McQueen.
There are also some perfectly adequate high-street versions, but buying a new Christmas jumper goes against the ethos of what the Christmas jumper represents anyway. It should be itchy, bobbled and tacky, definitely second-hand and preferably from a charity shop.
After scouring ebay and the local charities, I’ve finally came across the Christmas jumper of my dreams [pictured]. It isn’t what I was looking for; it’s better. It seems to be made of fake cotton wool snow and has a glitzy appliquéd flower design on the front, complete with gold outlines that look as if they’ve been coloured in with a shoddy glitter pen.
I’ll be wearing it on Christmas Day, safe in the knowledge that my years-old search for the perfect Christmas jumper has finally brought me one that is by far the most bad-taste of them all.
Or is it? Do you have a better one? If so send the pictures to ryan@cliconline.co.uk, we’d love to see them!
Loren is a weekly Sprout volunteer who blogs on fashion and Cardiff.
3 Comments – Postiwch sylw
Sprout Editor
Rhoddwyd sylw 17 mis yn ôl - 17th December 2010 - 13:57pm
Ha ha, I love this article! I moved house recently and decided to be very well behaved and finally move all of my old stuff out of my parents house, which has sat there in their attic for 8 years. Anyway, I found loads of old musty smelling clothes, amongst which was an old Christmas jumper that I'd completely forgotten about. At the time it was hideous and now it wouldn't look out of place on Oxford St!
It's a long, thick, white, long necked jumper with brown and black indian style designs. It's even got tassels on it that go all around the bottom. It's amazing!
I put it on straight away thinking that I'd look the height of fashion, but actually I didn't really pull it off and looked rather frumpy. So I've decided to give to to my much cooler younger sister for Christmas :)
Loren Sprout
Rhoddwyd sylw 17 mis yn ôl - 17th December 2010 - 15:50pm
You have to take a picture!
WoollyBabs
Rhoddwyd sylw 10 mis yn ôl - 27th July 2011 - 13:02pm
They're great aren't they! I too had always wanted a Christmas jumper and had a long standing arrangement with a friend that if I ever saw one for her I'd buy it and likewise she'd buy one for me.
But we never found any so my mum eventually made some for us. When we wore them out in pubs people tried to buy them off us so we now make them to sell.
So if you're still up for something full-on (think squeakers and bells) then have a look at what my mum Babs makes at http://woollybabs.com/