My accessory of the summer is the dinner sweater
It’s cool to be prepared for once.
For me, when I’m getting ready to leave the house and it’s March–October, I can hear a tiny voice in the back of my head saying you may get cold, it’ll be nice to have.
There’s something nostalgic about bringing a sweater to dinner. It reminds me of being on vacation somewhere in the south like Florida or South Carolina, or at our old country club and having to borrow one from my mom.
My favorite, go-to outfit for meeting up with friends is a slip dress and a cashmere cardigan or crewneck. Draped around my shoulders, waist, or even just on my arm, I feel like I’m in some indie rom-com. It’s very Charlotte York and not very Carrie Bradshaw. It’s classy—who doesn’t want to be classy? It sometimes also makes me feel like a cast member of Big Little Lies, wrapping myself in a cardigan that goes to the ground, and starring off into the Big Sur abyss, shielding myself from the cold and my scheming husband.
I’m also obsessed with tucking my hair into the collar of my sweater, which sometimes confuses people who tell me my hair is tucked in (I know. I’m trying to be chic, ok?), and to me, there’s nothing better than the combination of a slip dress, cashmere crewneck, ballet flat, hair tucked, al-fresco dining in New York.
The dinner sweater also reads “I’ve been out all day, I left my apartment at 10 a.m. and didn’t know what was in the cards for me, but now I’m in Dimes Square and it’s 6 p.m. and I have no intentions of going home any time soon.” It’s effortlessly cool but also prepared. It’s rarely cool to be prepared, but the dinner sweater is.
Here’s a cool girl dinner sweater scroll to further cement my point:
Even beyond just dinner, if you work in an office that has sub-arctic air conditioning like mine, the dinner sweater quickly becomes a desk sweater. But then, it ends up awkwardly covering up the outfit I agonized unnecessarily over for the same people I see every day (fun fact about me if you didn’t know, I pick out what I wear religiously before bed every night, and it often ends up being something that stresses me out before I’m supposed to wind down).
Although sometimes the best dinner sweaters are the ones borrowed by someone you’re out to dinner with, I’ve comprised a list of places where my favorite dinner sweaters are from:
Reformation
The Cashmere Boyfriend Sweater ($168)
I think I have this color but the name is turning me off…
Quince
Mongolian Cashmere V-Neck Sweater ($50)
Yeah…you read that right. $50.
Favorite Daughter
I have a lot of sweaters from here but here are my two top-level picks:
The Rebecca Cashmere Cardigan ($228)
My other favorite dinner sweaters are annoying because they’re vintage, but they include a Lacoste pullover, I’ll link a similar one here (all of my best vintage finds are on Etsy these days…more on that later), an Urban Renewal crewneck that came as a “mystery box” type of randomization, (I got it four years ago but I think this is the exact product link I used), and one I found at the Portobello Road Market in London by one of my favorite vintage Instagram accounts @nudelagoon.
It’s the summer of the dinner sweater, girls. Steal your boyfriend’s, steal your mom’s, steal mine, I don’t care. Just drape it around your shoulders like you’re a fictional boarding school student in 2005 and enjoy the night.