When Do Sweaters Go On Sale? I Pulled Four Years of Federal Price Data to Find the Real Dip
The new fall knits landed this week at full price, the shopping press is already telling you to order before they sell out, and the autocomplete is asking when Uniqlo and J.Crew sweaters get cheap. So I averaged four years of government price data by calendar month and then walked today's sale racks. The discounts are real, and they don't behave the way the panic headlines assume.
· · Updated August 22, 2026 
The fall knits are on the wall as of this week. J.Crew’s 2025 Rollneck is up at $98 to $128, its cashmere crews start at $148, Gap’s CashSoft line runs $69.95 to $89.95, and Who What Wear is already running a headline that starts “If You Panic When Things Start to Sell Out.” Meanwhile the autocomplete under this question is people holding out: when do cashmere sweaters go on sale, when do Uniqlo sweaters go on sale, when do J.Crew sweaters go on sale.
We haven’t bought any of them. What I did was pull the price index the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes for women’s apparel, unadjusted, and average each calendar month’s move across 2022 through this summer. Sale seasons show up in that line whether retailers announce them or not, because it tracks what stores actually charged.
When are sweaters cheapest, month by month?
Sweater prices sit at their winter floor in December and January, after November alone takes back 3.9%, and they are at their most expensive in September. The month-by-month wave in women’s apparel, unadjusted, looks like this.
| Month | Average price move | What’s happening |
|---|---|---|
| February | +5.4% | Spring arrivals reset the floor |
| March | +2.1% | Full-price spring |
| April to June | about -1% each | The quiet slide begins |
| July | -2.2% | Summer clearance bottom |
| August | +3.0% | Fall arrivals land, you are here |
| September | +3.5% | The steepest climb of the year |
| October | -0.8% | First soft wobble |
| November | -3.9% | The Black Friday drop |
| December | -2.3% | Clearance, index near its yearly floor |
| January | +0.6% | Picked-over racks stabilize |
One hedge before you plan around it: this line covers all women’s clothing, not knitwear alone. But sweaters ride the cold half of that wave, and the shape is blunt. Prices climb about six and a half percent from July’s bottom into September. Then November takes back almost 4% in one month, December keeps cutting, and the level around December and January is the lowest of the winter. February doesn’t continue the sale. It ends it, with the sharpest markup of the year.
Are sweaters on sale in August?
August markdowns are real but thin: on J.Crew’s women’s sweater page on August 20, the first 34 styles rendered included exactly two with a cut price, an open-knit linen-blend V-neck and a pullover named Montauk. Neither is a fall knit. Every rollneck and every cashmere crew sat at full price. Gap’s nine rendered CashSoft and cotton styles carried no markdowns at all. Uniqlo blocked every route I tried, so I can’t tell you what its rack looks like, and I won’t guess.
The August sale rack is real, in other words, but it’s last season’s clearance, not a discount on the sweater you came for. The knit that just launched won’t see a number smaller than its tag until roughly November, and the same wave shows up on coats.
Cashmere has one exit from the whole game. Quince’s Mongolian crew sat at $49.90 today, the same flat number it holds year round, by design. There’s nothing to wait for there, which is its own kind of answer.
Is it worth waiting for the November sweater sale?
Waiting works on three windows: late November for the loud discount, December into January for the deep one, and April through July for the quiet one, when nobody wants wool and the secondhand racks fill up with it. That last window is the cheapest and the least discussed.
What the calendar can’t price is the size run. November’s discount only helps if your size survives ten weeks of full-price selling, and the panic headlines exist because sometimes it doesn’t. Our read: if the sweater is a core style in a common size and color, the wave works for you, so wait for the November drop. If it’s this year’s shape from a label that runs small batches, the markdown usually arrives after your size has left the building, and you’re choosing between full price now and someone else’s sweater in January. That’s not a sale question so much as a triage one, and only your closet knows the answer.