Cardigan (sweater)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A cardigan is a type of sweater/jumper with buttons or zips down the front. It was named after James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, a British military commander, during his service in the Crimean War. It is usually machine or hand knitted from wool. Cardigans are available for both sexes but recent fashions have resulted in them being more typically worn by women and fashion-forward men. They are very much synonymous with indie rock and twee fashion.

[edit] Trivia

In an assassination attempt similar to the incident that took the life of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, former Bulgarian state radio editor Vladimir Kostov survived an attack in Paris as he was leaving the subway when a Bulgarian secret agent injected into him a ricin-coated platinum pellet hidden in the tip of an umbrella. The agent failed to kill Kostov because the heavy woollen cardigan he was wearing that day kept the pellet from penetrating his skin too deeply.

In Spanish, a woman's cardigan is known as "chaqueta rebeca." The name derives from the film Rebecca (1940), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, in which the character played by Joan Fontaine wore this type of sweater.[1]