Women Have Been Telling Me for Eleven Years That They Cannot Wear a Polo Neck. The Gwendolen Is What I Did About It.

Six things I insisted on, why the neck is exactly the height it is, and why it is going out at £62.95.

My name is Emma. My sister Alison and I have had the shop just off the green in Richmond for eleven years, and in that time I have had the same conversation more often than any other. A woman picks up a polo neck, holds it against herself, and puts it back down. When I ask, the answer is always a version of the same thing: she likes the look, she cannot bear the feel.

So she buys a round neck instead and spends the winter with a cold gap at the throat and a scarf she has to keep rearranging.

That is a solved problem. It has been solved for years and almost nobody bothers, because the neckband is the cheapest part of a jumper to get wrong and the easiest place to save a few pence. When we had the Gwendolen made I went in with six things, and the first one is the only one anybody notices.

1A neck two fingers high, and not a millimetre more.

High enough to cover the throat where the cold gets in, low enough that it never touches the underside of your jaw. That is the whole difference between a jumper you keep on and one that goes to the back of a drawer. We had three samples. The first two came back too high, because a taller band is easier to knit and looks more like the thing everybody expects.

2Ribbing that survives the washing machine.

The neck, the cuffs and the hem are properly ribbed rather than rolled, and the rib is deep enough to pull back into shape as it dries. A cheap neckband goes wavy after three washes and then the whole jumper looks tired no matter how good the wool is. It is not the part anybody looks at in a photograph. It is the part that decides whether you still like it in February.

3Fine, so it goes under a coat.

A chunky jumper is warm in the shop and impossible under a coat, and then you are carrying it about by two in the afternoon. This is knitted fine enough that it goes under a sleeve without bunching at the elbow, and it is still enough on its own in a cool room. That is a narrower target than it sounds and it took us two goes.

4Plain. Deliberately, stubbornly plain.

No cable, no colour block, no detail at the shoulder. A jumper like this has one job, which is to go under and behind everything else you own without arguing with any of it. Every pattern I have ever put on a layering piece has narrowed it down to three outfits. This one goes with all of them.

5Cut with room through the body.

It skims rather than follows, and it is long enough to sit over the waistband of trousers instead of riding up above it every time you reach for something. Fine knits are where a lot of women get caught out, because thin yarn shows everything if the cut is mean. This one is not mean.

6Eleven colours, so you can match your coat.

Cream, brown, navy, green, grey, light blue, light grey, dark grey, red, black and blue. That is more than any sensible person needs and that is the point. A layering piece should be bought to go under the coat you already have, not to match whatever colour the shops have decided on this year. Buying eleven colourways of one jumper is the least fashionable thing we do and it is the thing customers thank us for most.

Set against the jumper drawer

Most of us have four or five and wear one. Here is what I think goes wrong with the other four.

	The jumper in the drawer	The Gwendolen
The neck	Polo that grips, or a cold round neck	Two fingers high, covers and lets go
After washing	Neckband goes wavy	Deep rib, pulls back into shape
Under a coat	Too thick, bunches at the elbow	Fine enough to disappear
The cut	Thin yarn, mean fit, shows everything	Skims, and sits over the waistband
The colour	Whatever was in that season	Eleven, so it matches your coat

A woman should not have to choose between being strangled and being draughty. That is the entire brief the Gwendolen was made to.

Why it is £62.95

We buy in small quantities and this year the yarn and the shipping both went up on us, and neither went onto the ticket. The Gwendolen came in at £180 and it is going out at £62.95. More than one and it drops again: 15% on two, 20% on three, 25% on four or more.

I will be plain rather than clever about it. Eleven colours is a lovely thing for a customer and an expensive thing for a shop our size, because it means eleven runs to carry instead of three. Some of those colours have moved and some have not, and we cannot sit on the ones that have not until spring. When a colour is finished it is finished, because we are not reordering eleven ways at this number.

Eleven years behind this counter has taught me that a woman who finds the layer that actually works buys it twice. That is the bet Alison and I are making at £62.95.

Of everything we have had made, this is the one I am quietest about and the one I own in three colours.

What comes back to us is always the neck. If you have a polo neck in a drawer that you have worn twice, this is the one I would hand you myself, while the colours are still there.

Emma, for Emma & Alison Winslow · Richmond

See the Gwendolen at £62.95 →

This is a letter from one of the two sisters who run The Winslow Sisters. Prices and colours shown are correct at the time of writing and change as the run sells through. This page is a paid advertisement for The Winslow Sisters. The Winslow Sisters · Richmond · Free UK delivery · 30-day returns. Your statutory rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 are not affected.