The Very Long Game

Knitwear's trendiest gambit? Sweaters whose extra-long sleeves hang well below the fingertips. A writer attempts to function as a human being while testing five of them.

- IVA DIXIT

ON THE LIST of things that annoy me, sweaters (yes, sweaters) occupy a very specific place. On other people I find them charming and, on occasion, even seductive. On myself, however, they're downright unerotic-empty promises encased in scratchy fibers that do little to shelter me against bitter cold.

And that's before we've even gotten to the real offense that's currently being perpetrated in sweaterlandia-the sleeves.

If you were at any point exposed to the phenomenon that was the "Twilight" movies, you're no stranger to the heroine Bella Swan's mystifying instinct to stretch the hems of her sweaters' sleeves over her fists, creating a little igloo for her fingers and thumbs. (Millennial-nostalgia TikTok abounds with parodies of this Swan tendency).

In the last couple of years, clothing brands geared toward adult women have taken to producing extra-longsleeved knits, encouraging a similar sleight of hand.

Divya Mathur, fashion director at online women's retailer Revolve, attributes these sweaters' popularity to the re-emergence of the "cozy girl" aesthetic-a "relaxed, comfy style of dressing, which inherently leans toward knitwear," she said.

I, a foremost sweater skeptic, bravely agreed to test five of the more droopily appendaged examples.