Men's Cashmere Sweater Size Guide & Fit

The size chart — chest, sleeve and body length

All three measurements, for every size, in centimetres with inches beneath. Measurements are the garment laid flat, so the chest figure is half the circumference — double it to get the chest the sweater will go around. Sleeve is measured from the shoulder seam to the end of the cuff.

Body length

64–73 cm

Chest, flat

48–56 cm

Sleeve

60–68 cm

Sizes

S–2XL

Every measurement, size by size, in the table below

The graded run moves in a strict pattern, which is worth knowing before you decide to size up: every size adds 2 cm of chest and 2 cm of sleeve. Body length adds 2 cm each step except the last, where 2XL adds 3 cm. There is no size where you can buy more chest without also buying more sleeve.

These figures apply to the Men's Crew Neck Cashmere Sweater and the Men's V-Neck Cashmere Sweater, which share a size run. The Men's Quarter Zip Cashmere Sweater is a separate garment with one size.

How to measure a sweater you already own

This is the only method that reliably works, because it compares a garment to a garment rather than a garment to a body. It takes about two minutes and a tape measure.

1. Pick the right reference sweater.Choose one of a similar weight — another fine knit, not a chunky lambswool or a hoodie — that fits the way you want this one to fit. If every sweater you own is slightly too tight, do not use one of those as the reference.
2. Lay it flat, front up, and leave it alone.A hard surface, not a bed. Fasten any buttons or zip. Smooth the wrinkles out with your hand but do not pull the fabric — a knit will happily give you 3 cm that does not exist.
3. Chest: straight across, 2.5 cm below the armhole.Seam to seam, tape flat and level, not following the curve of the body. That number is directly comparable to the “chest (flat)” column above.
4. Sleeve: shoulder seam to cuff edge.Start where the sleeve is stitched to the body and run along the top of the sleeve to the end of the cuff. This is the measurement most guides leave out, and it is the one most likely to send the sweater back.
5. Body length: shoulder to hem.Straight down the front. Useful as a sanity check, but treat it as the least decisive of the three — see what we cannot tell you yet for why.
6. Match the chest and the sleeve, in that order.Find the size whose chest is closest to yours, then check its sleeve. If the sleeve is more than about 2 cm off what you measured, that is a full size of sleeve, and you should decide which of the two you can live with before you order.

If you have nothing to measure

Buying this as a gift is the common case — this is overwhelmingly a category where someone buys for someone else and cannot try the garment on the wearer. If you cannot get to a sweater he already owns, you can work from a chest measurement, but treat what follows as arithmetic on our own chart rather than a promise.

1. Measure the chest circumference.Tape under the arms, level all the way round, over a shirt, breathing normally.
2. Halve it.That is the flat half-chest, directly comparable to our chest column.
3. Add ease.The gap between the garment's flat chest and his half-chest is the ease. As a general knitwear rule of thumb — not something we have measured on these three garments — 2–3 cm reads close-fitting, 4–6 cm reads regular, and 8 cm and up reads relaxed and will layer over a shirt comfortably.

How much ease you want depends on what is going underneath it, and a collared shirt takes noticeably more room than a thin tee — What to Wear Under a Sweater covers which layers actually work under which neckline. It also depends on the season you are buying for: a sweater meant for an air-conditioned office in June wants less ease than one meant to go over a shirt in January, and where a winter-weight knit still works out of season is set out on Can You Wear Cashmere in Summer?

The quarter zip's free size, and who it will not fit

The quarter zip comes in one size. Not one size that is generously cut — one size, at 65 cm body, 50 cm chest laid flat and 60 cm sleeve. Held against the graded run, that is a very specific garment:

• The chest is an M — 50 cm, identical to the M in the crew and V-neck.
• The sleeve is an S — 60 cm, 2 cm shorter than the M sleeve and 4 cm shorter than the L.
• The body sits between S and M at 65 cm — 1 cm longer than the S, 1 cm shorter than the M.

One size is a real constraint, and it is worth knowing what you are accepting it for. What the collar actually is — a standing funnel with a zip, the only one of its kind in the range — is described on Funnel Neck Sweaters for Men.

Why “true to size” tells you nothing

There is no standards body for menswear sizing. An M is whatever each brand's own fit block says an M is, and those blocks differ by more than a full size across labels that sit next to each other on the same page. “True to size” means “true to our size”, which you have no way of knowing in advance. It is not a lie so much as a sentence with nothing in it.

This is not a theoretical problem in cashmere specifically. Reading the reviews of four best-selling competitor cashmere sweaters turned up 50 separate negative mentions of fit — the single most common complaint in the category by a distance, ahead of pilling, ahead of colour, ahead of durability. One of those listings concedes “May run small” in its own bullet points. The same garment collects “runs small by two sizes” from one buyer and fits the next one perfectly, because the two buyers were comparing it to different sweaters in their own wardrobes.

Only numbers travel between wardrobes. That is why every measurement on this page is published, why the sleeve is listed separately instead of being folded into a “fits chest 48–50” range, and why we would rather you spent two minutes with a tape measure than trusted the letter on our label.

Sleeve length is where sweaters fail

S

60 cm

M

62 cm

L

64 cm

XL

66 cm

2XL

68 cm

Sleeve shown against chest and body length in the size chart

In the same review sample, fit complaints split in both directions on the arms — “the arms are too long” and “sleeves too short” — and that pairing is what defeats the usual advice to just size up.

Look again at the chart. Sleeve is graded in lockstep with chest, 2 cm at every step. Size up to fix a tight chest and you have also bought 2 cm of sleeve you did not want. Size down to fix long sleeves and the chest goes with it. There is no combination in the range that gives you a 2XL chest on an M sleeve, and no alteration short of a knitwear specialist shortening the cuff.

What a well-fitting cashmere sleeve does: it ends at the wrist bone, with enough length that pushing it up your forearm does not drag the shoulder out of place. Too long and the cuff sits over the back of your hand, which is not just a look problem — that is the fabric that catches on desk edges and pills first. Does Cashmere Pill? covers why the cuff and forearm go before anything else.

Who these sweaters will not fit

The range stops at 2XL. That is 56 cm chest laid flat — 112 cm, or 44.1 in, to wear — with a 73 cm body and a 68 cm sleeve. Above that we have nothing, and there is no big-and-tall line waiting in the wings. The quarter zip has one size and will not fit most men who need an L or above.

Three sweaters is a small range. A workshop of the artisans who make your sweater — around 180 people, several of whom are working through spinal injuries or deafness — does not produce thirty styles across eight sizes. That is a real limit, not a positioning choice, and it is better said here than discovered at the parcel.

What we cannot tell you yet

Four things a good size guide should carry that this one does not, marked as unconfirmed rather than estimated:

The body-length reference matters more than it sounds: the two conventions differ by roughly 2 cm, which is a whole size. Until it is confirmed, buy on chest and sleeve. Ply, gauge and weight decide whether a sweater reads as warm without bulk or as thin for the price — the same property, two different reviews — and we will not guess at numbers that load-bearing.