Róisín Ingle: The power of a good cardigan (and a compliment)

I have officially entered my cardigan era. It happens to us all eventually. It happened to me organically and overnight. A dear friend, who has developed a sudden wild enthusiasm for knitting, took a notion to knit me a giant cardigan and sent it to me by post, carefully wrapped and placed in a recycled designer box. At first I thought I’d accidentally ordered something online from Gucci, which seemed highly unlike me. Then I unwrapped the tissue paper to find the cardigan. I put it on, and the rest is knitstory.

As a piece of clothing, it’s very off-brand in terms of my usual gear. For a start, it is hot pink when most of my wardrobe is black. I’ve always felt too conspicuous in bright clothing. Black makes me feel like I am blending into the background, nothing to see here. Black is also deeply pragmatic – when everything in your wardrobe is various shades of black, everything you own naturally co-ordinates. Also, as a congenital spiller of food and drink, black hides a multitude. So this cardigan, an item of clothing that practically screams LOOK AT ME WEARING MY HUGE AND EXTREMELY COLOURFUL CARDIGAN, bucked all my usual style trends.

Being very honest, it’s the kind of outsized, loud item I might only have worn around the house if it weren’t for the fact that almost as soon as I put it on it started to garner a lot of compliments. The first inkling that this was no ordinary cardigan came when one of my teenagers, who barely notices I exist these days, stuck her head up from the phone to mutter “that’s a nice cardigan”. I wore it to answer the door to the postman one day. “I like your cardigan,” he said. He didn’t reach out to touch the soft wool but I could tell he wanted to, and I couldn’t really blame him.

I went to a gig in a cool pub where everyone was 30 years younger than me, and one of those 20-somethings went out of their way to give me a steady flow of cardigan-related compliments

After that, I wore it to the supermarket. “I like your cardigan,” said the woman at the till, as she scanned my cans of tomatoes. I grew bolder. I wore it to a dinner party and got compliments from three people. I began to wear the cardigan the way you would the softest piece of armour, knowing that on low days the chances were that wearing it would result in a self-esteem boosting compliment. It never failed.

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I wore the cardigan to a film premiere where two extremely stylish people I didn’t know, one of whom had an asymmetrical haircut, stopped to inquire about the provenance of my cardigan. I went to a gig in a cool pub where everyone was 30 years younger than me, and one of those 20-somethings went out of their way to give me a steady flow of cardigan-related compliments. At the theatre, a former Rose of Tralee told me she liked my cardigan during the interval of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days. At a literary festival outside a pub in the early hours of the morning, the bass player of a world-renowned rock band reached out to touch my arm. “I like your cardigan,” he said. I nearly died. In a good way.

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After each of these compliments, I would text my friend. “Yet another compliment for your cardigan,” I’d tell her, and the compliment would grow arms, reaching out to give her a hug. It turned out the charms of the cardigan were not only discernible in real life but also transcended to the virtual world. A friend put a picture of me on Facebook and somebody asked, “Where did she get that cardigan?”

I suppose it was inevitable that I would eventually become my friend’s main cardigan muse, a sort of Dora Maar to her Pablo Picasso, but much less problematic. Emboldened by her success and wanting to increase my cardigan-based happiness, my friend made me another cardigan. It was similarly bulky but made from different-coloured wool, a mix of blues, teal and pale purple. You’d think cardigan lightning could not possibly strike twice, but honestly this one gets even more compliments. I’ve been telling my friend to give up her full-time job and go into knitting colourful cardigans full-time – Complimentary Cardigans, she could call it – but she claims it’s just a joyful hobby.

What is definitely magical and transformative is the steady flow of unforced, genuine, spontaneous compliments

I took to listening to Taylor Swift wearing my cardigan. Swift knows the power of a good cardigan, having written a song about it called, obviously, Cardigan: “And when I felt like I was an old cardigan/Under someone’s bed/You put me on and said I was your favourite”. Swift, an astute businesswoman, sells cardigans on her website now as highly sought-after merch, but they don’t have quite the allure of my friend’s cardigans.

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I can’t say for sure whether the cardigans my friend made for me have actual magical qualities. What I’ve learned is that the mood-boosting power of a solid, colour-forward handknit cannot be underestimated. And what is definitely magical and transformative is the steady flow of unforced, genuine, spontaneous compliments. If you like a person’s cardigan/runners/jumper/jeans, tell them. If they are anything like me, it might just make their year.

The compliments keep coming. Walking around town one day recently wearing the blue and purple creation, I realised the cardigan’s allure was beyond any earthly understanding or explanation. I had bumped into a frenemy on the quays. “I like your cardigan,” they said, even though you could tell it killed them to admit such a thing. The cardigan had clearly blinded them to our previous enmity. Witchcraft in wool form. Cardigan power. My friend could make a fortune – but that’s not why she knits.