I am particularly fond of golf cardigans, specifically Arnold Palmer golf cardigans. Personally designed by Arnold Palmer it says on the label. Yeah, sure I can believe a man who was exceptionally good at golf was also an expert on fabrics and garment manufacture. In another sphere, anyone interested in cycling will know many of the good framesets bear the names of past champions in the sport. Eddie Merckx, for example. Who would have guessed that such a champion was good at welding too?
So my point is that I doubt Mr. Palmer's input went much beyond make it a bit baggy in the upper body and have ample sleeves so I can take a good swing. In fact he probably just took the money in exchange for the use of his name and left it to Robert Bruce, the manufacturer to do the rest.
The AP cardigan was not the only card made by the above mentioned company, they made others. The examples I have share a design characteristic which may have been unique to the brand, a curled over edge to the material achieved by fine stitching pulling the edge inwards. This may have been unique to them; I've not seen it elsewhere.
The AP cardigans were available in acrylic, wool, and alpaca and thus available to a wide market. They seemed to be mostly marketed in the sixties and seventies and about ten years ago were plentiful on EBay. There's fewer of them about these days so I suspect they'll soon be gone.
A factor which drew me to them is that most of them had two-hole buttons. They later went to four hole and incorporated the AP emblem on the chest. Before then, the emblem, a golf umbrella was embossed on the buttons, except when it wasn't. I have AP cardigans whose buttons match the general pattern exactly except for the embossed emblem, no idea what was going on there at all. If anyone knows let me know.
There was another brand of golf cardigan, endorsed by Nick Faldo. If I recall correctly they were sleeveless and had a wide v at the bottom of the front, thus not buttoning all the way down; never liked 'em.
But Arnold Palmer cardigans I do like.
Here's one with the plain buttons.
Now imagine a modern take on the golf card, we could have a Tiger Woods golf cardigan.Perhaps several different models, the "shagger" five button sleeveless and the "super shagger" six button with sleeves. The heterosexual dimension is slightly off putting but to coin a cardigan-related term, the idea has buttons.
On another topic, but one I've banged on about before, here's another interesting take on the poppers issue
Thanks for reading I'll post again soon.
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