Comme des Garçons Sweater with Tulle Overlay

Tulle is a net. It is a mesh with more hole in it than thread, and its whole usefulness is that it occupies space without concealing what is behind it. Lay it over a solid wool knit and two things happen at once. The color underneath is veiled rather than covered, so a red reads slightly cooler and slightly further away than it does on its own. And the surface of the knit is held at a small distance from the eye, so the stitch goes soft while the outline of the garment goes hard. That second effect is the interesting one. A wool sweater has a soft perimeter by nature, because a spun yarn carries a halo and a knitted edge has no crease in it; a net laid over the top gives the garment a crisp boundary it could not have had on its own. The construction is two materials doing opposite jobs, wool for the body, the warmth, and the weight, and a polyester net for the edge and the light. Made in Japan, in red and in white.

Most sheer-over-solid pieces put the sheer underneath, where it does nothing but warm the hand. This one puts the net on the outside and lets it change the color of the thing it is covering, which is a harder idea and a better one.

The main line has always been willing to let one layer rewrite another, and this is that argument made with a net on the outside rather than a lining on the inside.

Main: one hundred percent wool. Overlay: one hundred percent polyester. Made in Japan. Long-sleeved, with the tulle laid over the knit. Colors: red and white. We do not hold a gauge, a measurement, or an account of how the two layers are joined.

Two layers with different amounts of give. A wool knit stretches and recovers; a tulle has very little stretch in any direction, so the overlay is what sets the limit and the sweater will feel less elastic than a knit of the same weight without one. Choose it on the shoulder. The net adds no warmth and no thickness, so whatever it goes under is unaffected.

Red against black and against nothing else, which is what a veiled red is for. White over a dark trouser, where the net is legible as an edge. Under the Layered Organdy Jacket, which arrives at its color the same way, out of the distance between two layers.

Two materials, and they fail to different things. The wool wants a cool hand wash, no agitation, and to be dried flat. The polyester net wants no heat at all, because a hot iron will melt a fine mesh and there is nothing to be done afterward. So this is not a garment to press and not a garment to put in a machine. If it needs more than airing, give it to a cleaner and tell them there is a net over a wool. Store it flat rather than on a hanger, because the overlay carries none of the weight and the knit underneath will do all of the stretching. Our care guidance covers the rest.

The Layered Organdy Jacket arrives at its color out of the distance between two layers in the same way, and the Eyelet LS with Mesh Overlay lays a mesh over an open cloth rather than over a solid one. There is more on the house on the Comme des Garçons designer page. Everything we carry from Comme des Garçons is listed together.