When assessing knitting patterns one has to ignore the styling. Yes, a team of professionals have made a certain pattern look appealing because the very attractive model wearing it appears to be, say, sailing down the Riviera, lounging elaborately in a deck chair, and is being fed chocolate truffles by a very handsome, adoring man, but you don't sail, you've never even been to France, chocolate gives you hives, the man in your life may adore you but he hardly ever notices what you wear, and you're not 5'10" and 115 pounds. You need to think about whether that sweater is going to fit and flatter you, whether it'll work with your existing wardrobe and be suitable for the climate where you live, and whether you can wear it to your specific workplace or out to the pub with friends. In short, you need to refuse to buy into the fantasy the stylist is trying to sell you, and to be realistic about whether the pattern will work for you.
In the cases where a photo is styled in an unattractive or dated way, you still need to look beyond the styling when you're assessing a pattern. This is actually quite a nice late sixties- or early seventies-era pattern that is perfectly wearable by today's standards, and that some knitters might dismiss without even really looking at it because the photo looks so silly and dated. I wouldn't make this top in these colours, but instead would choose a yarn and beads that were analogous (say, pale blue and lavender), and I would think about whether I have enough neck for a turtleneck. (If I were you, that is, because I know I don't have sufficient neck for this style.)
But of course before or after you've assessed this pattern, you'll want to take a minute to laugh at this cracked-out photo, because it looks like a still from some avant-garde horror movie where the character (and the audience) can't decide whether she really saw whatever it is she's looking at or whether she hallucinated it and needs to stop abusing her prescription meds. Or to declaim some sort of free-form, obscurely self-referential poem. I don't know which.
So true. And sometimes the models are posed at awkward angles to disguise problems with the garment. It's so important to focus on the garment itself -- not the styling so you can access whether it will flatter your figure.
ReplyDeleteIt's a very nice stitch pattern, certainly. But I never did get the point of having bare arms (= cold) when you're extra covered up elsewhere - in this case, keeping your neck warm. Or a sleeveless dress in an Aran pattern, and Aran weight yarn. I don't know whether the theory was that on average you would be the right temperature. (I remember the 60s , so I ought to know, but I didn't get it then either.)
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