Stripes on a cardigan are an easy thing to get wrong. Too bold and the whole thing reads as costume. Too washed out and you’ve got something that just sits there doing nothing. The ones worth owning sit in a very specific middle ground where the stripe adds interest without making the cardigan the loudest thing in the room. We’ve been looking specifically at options where the colour combinations hold up across different outfits rather than locking you into one look. A stripe cardigan should work over a plain white shirt, under a coat, and on its own with trousers on a weekend. That’s the test we’ve applied here. Yarn weight matters too because a flimsy stripe loses its shape fast and starts to look cheap within a season. These are the ones that pass on all counts. Wear them enough and the stripe stops feeling like a statement and starts feeling like just how you dress.