This might be my only legitimate schoolboy cardigan. Not that I mugged a schoolboy to get it, but I should point out that where I came from, that is the most meritable way of acquiring one. A distant second is actually attending school. Fashioned by the company School Apparel, this sweater is made of a stiff acrylic, easily wiping clean of mud, cafeteria food fights, and finger paint. Because of it’s hyper-synthetic ingredients, it also resists the lingering scent of cheap cigarettes (sneaked behind the gym). But more alarming than the carcinogens it’s made of is the fact that it’s an adult size small, which is why, at first glance, you thought I was wearing Thom Browne. Good thing I have all those high-waisted old man trousers, otherwise this cardy would be midriff exposing (making it — if possible — even sexier). Bonus: the tag at the back of the neck has a line for my name. Which I filled in with a crayon. Which I then ate. Cardigan: found at a Goodwill store, unworn with the tags still on it.
Our contemporary cardigan’s history begins with the 7th Earl of Cardigan. The Earl was a harsh and elitist snob, remembered for leading the infamous charge of the Light Brigade, as well as discovering our sweater’s pater familias, which he supposedly wore at some point during the campaign, and to which he lends his name. It is sad to reflect that a sweater whose popular introduction was by a military man in an active theater of war and is now considered an emblem of effete academia. I assume the cardigan’s appearance in American schools was merely following its prevalence in British educational circles, or at least in cliched films about British boys schools. The same British public school system has also bequeathed other treasures to education: caning and cross dressing, if I remember those films correctly. Maybe it’s time to reread Tom Brown’s School Days.
The shirt is a regulation Brooks Bros with a subtle warm stripe, and the tie a Burberry in their classic plaid. Chalk and paddle are optional.
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