heavy metal knitwear

At some point in the early 1990’s the jumper seemed to become the must have item for any self respecting metalhead, I don’t know if this was just a south east of England thing or if it was more wide spread. One friend of mine believes this was inspired by the biker look but I disagree. While the biker look has had major influences on the heavy metal look I believe the whole jumper thing was more of a grunge influence, I do not remember seeing any jumpers before this point and then suddenly every body was into knitwear, like all the aunties in all the world went mad.
One thing my knitwear opponent and I agree on is the strange phenomenom of detecting somebodys music taste by their choice of knitted garments.

Chunky heavy misshapen and black – male metalheads
Loose baggy cardigans – indie fans (pre Britpop)
Long black or dark green baggy cardigans or long loose (netlike) knit jumpers – Goth male or female (occasional female metal fans too)
Fitted green (dark) or black cardy usually worn with long skirt and docs – female metallers (some Goth influence here methinks)
Tight knit jumper or cardigan sometimes striped but almost any colour usually worn with a wasted stoned expression – grungers
Striped (and I mean seriously striped) many coloured (Joseph would have been proud) of almost any shape but preferably made from hemp – crusties

I still have my(second) black shapeless jumper (my first was disposed of by my wife when I said I would wear it for the births of all my children) and I also have a back up jumper just in case. In fact I have a lovely grey and white jumper that looks like a Britpop influenced heavy metal jumper, it looks a bit naff but its lovely in its own jumpery sort of way (and it was a Christmas jumper and that makes it special).

To be honest I think the very first time I came across heavy metal knitwear was probably 1989 on the alpha metalhead in Stanford , I think he wore it in his getting shitfaced capacity and seeing as he almost fitted in the Goth category it did not seem out of place, but I swear it was not until late ’92 that knitwear really made an impact( if you can describe it as such).

Written with the aid of Bells scotch.

p.s. 56% of readers of this blog prefer jumper to (44%) cardigans