It’s too bad that the previous Prince of Wales, the great-uncle of the current titleholder, is known to history for his dubious decisions: namely, spending barely a year as Edward VIII before abdicating the throne, and picking the wrong horse in World War II.
Before he became the black sheep of the House of Windsor, the fair-haired Prince of Wales was known for woolens of a different color, his clothes slavishly imitated in the 1920s and early 1930s. In 1924, Men’s Wear magazine put it bluntly: “The average young man in America is more interested in the clothes of the Prince of Wales than in the clothes of any other individual on earth.”
Among the remarkable examples of his sartorial influence was the fame and fortune he inadvertently brought to obscure Fair Isle, one of the most isolated of the Shetland Islands, known for a knitting style bearing colorful folk motifs and bold geometric designs. He made the brightly patterned sweater a key part of the well-heeled golfing outfit; before long, the trim-fitting Fair Isle sweater was an all-around emblem of the sporting good life.
Identified with skiing, Scandinavia and snowflakes in the ’50s and ’60s, the sweater has in recent years become baggier and schlumpier, more a token of the couching life than the sporting one.
“It kind of lost its way in the ’80s and ’90s,” said Michael Bastian, who has made the Fair Isle sweater a signature of his men’s collection as well as the collegiate-style line he designs for Gant. “That’s why we try to make it more masculine with the patterns and colors. I even did a motif of crossed lacrosse sticks on one this year.”
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