Merino Wool Jumpers, £29.90 to £99: Two of These Labels Go Quiet Where It Matters
Seven crew necks with merino in the product name, opened on the same afternoon. I copied out two fields from each page, the composition line and the care line, and they don't climb with the price.
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The knitwear pages turned over this week, well ahead of any weather asking for them. M&S has eighteen women’s jumpers filed under merino wool this afternoon, John Lewis keeps a merino tab of its own, and the word sits in nearly every product name on both. Lovely word. It’s carrying a lot.
So I opened seven of them, crew necks and round necks, and copied down two fields from each: the composition line and the care line, with the prices as they stood on the UK pages on the afternoon of August 24. We haven’t had a single one of these in our hands, and everything below is what the retailer prints on its own page, which is that retailer’s transcription of the label sewn into the garment.
| Jumper (UK page, Aug 24) | Price | Composition field as printed | Care line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uniqlo Merino Crew Neck Jumper | £29.90 (30-day low shown) | 100% Wool | Machine wash to 40°C, gentle, no tumble |
| M&S Collection Pure Merino Crew Neck | £36 | 100% merino wool (exclusive of trimmings) | Wash at 40°C, tumble dry medium |
| John Lewis Merino Wool Crew Neck | £45 | 100% merino wool | Wool cycle, reshape damp, dry flat |
| HOBBS Merino Wool Rich Crew Neck (at M&S) | £50, was £99 | 80% wool, 20% polyamide | Machine wash per care label |
| Celtic & Co. Boat Neck Pure Merino (at John Lewis) | £89 | wool | Do Not Bleach |
| HUSH Anastasia Merino Wool Round Neck (at John Lewis) | £90 | 100% merino wool | Cool hand wash |
| JAEGER Pure Merino Wool Textured Notch Neck (at M&S) | £99 | 100% wool | Wash at 40°C, do not tumble dry |
What does “merino wool rich” mean on a label?
The Hobbs Merino Wool Rich Crew Neck Jumper at M&S prints 80% wool and 20% polyamide in its composition field, and the word merino doesn’t appear in that field at all. “Rich” is the softener. A fifth of it by weight is nylon, which is a fair thing to want in a jumper and a strange thing to pay £99 for without being told, and the number is one line below a name that never mentions it.
Nylon in a knit is there for strength rather than warmth, as far as I can tell, so the trade is a jumper that may well outlast the pure ones and never feel quite like them. Worth knowing before you pay, which is the whole of our position on how long clothes actually last.
Is merino wool worth the money?
The £36 M&S jumper prints “100% merino wool (exclusive of trimmings)” and the £99 Jaeger jumper, sold in the same shop, prints “100% wool”. Both use the words pure merino in the product name. Only one of them repeats it in the field where the fibre gets declared.
That’s not proof the Jaeger is something other than merino. Merino is wool, so a page typing the generic term has said nothing false, it has just declined to commit, and you’re the one standing there holding the £99.
Celtic & Co.’s £89 boat neck goes quietest of all. Composition: wool. Care instructions, in full: Do Not Bleach.
Can you machine wash a merino wool jumper?
Uniqlo’s UK page allows a machine wash up to 40 degrees on a gentle cycle, and the £36 M&S jumper goes further than anything else here by allowing a medium tumble dry. The £90 Hush is cool hand wash only, and John Lewis wants its own £45 crew neck on a wool cycle, reshaped damp, dried flat.
Read that column downward and the two most forgiving care lines sit on the two cheapest jumpers. A machine-washable wool has been treated to survive the drum, and that’s a normal thing to want in something you’ll wear weekly. Uniqlo also claims anti-pill processing on the page. A claim, not a field.
None of this settles which jumper is nicer. Fit, gauge, colour and how the shoulder sits are real and none of them appear in a composition field, the same wall we hit last weekend reading two-ply cashmere claims.
But if you’re buying one this month, read down rather than across. Uniqlo’s page carries a thirty-day low of £29.90 and two words where it counts.