The Men’s Sweater: From Sea Spray To Cashmere To Yak, All The Way To Ballard
If you open your closet in November, there is a good chance you reach for one thing first: a sweater. Simple, dependable, quietly confident. At LANDOVERLAND, we obsess over sweaters because they sit right at the crossroads of function and story. To really understand why the Scout cashmere and the Muscle yak wool feel so “right” in the Pacific Northwest, it helps to go back to where the men’s sweater began.
From Fishing Boats To “Jumpers”
Long before office thermostats and airport lounges, the sweater belonged to the sea. The earliest ancestors of the modern sweater show up in the Middle Ages as heavy wool “jerseys” worn by fishermen in the Channel Islands, especially on the island of Jersey. These were thick, tightly knitted wool pullovers that could take spray, wind, and long wet days on the water. Wool was the obvious choice. It insulates even when damp and natural lanolin helps repel water. Paul James Knitwear+1
From there, you get regional legends. The Guernsey or “gansey” knit, built in the round from dense wool, became standard armor for British and Scottish fishermen. Close fitting, no dangling pockets, nothing to snag on net or rope. Just warmth, toughness, and a pattern that said where you were from. guernseywoollens.com+1
These early sweaters were not fashion. They were gear. The kind of thing a man wore down at the docks that had to survive salt, rope, and years of weather. If you have ever walked the working side of Ballard and watched the nets getting repaired under a low sky, you already know the spiritual home of the sweater.
When “Sweater” Started To Mean A Sweater
The word “sweater” had a strange early life. In English, it shows up in the 1500s meaning a “person who sweats” or someone who works hard. In the 1600s it could mean something that makes you sweat. Only in the late 1800s does it become the garment we know, when athletes began wearing heavy wool pullovers to promote sweating during training. Etymology Online+1
By the early 1900s, sweaters were moving off the docks and playing fields and into everyday life. Knitwear houses and later fashion designers in the 1920s started treating the sweater as something stylish, not just practical. navygrey.co
But at its core, the garment stayed the same. A knitted upper-body layer built to keep you warm while you move. That basic idea is the same one we lean on in the Pacific Northwest, whether you are walking the Ballard Locks, riding a ferry in January, or chasing the last bit of light up in the Cascades.
Wool: The Original Workhorse
For centuries, the men’s sweater was almost always sheep’s wool. It was local, renewable, and proven. Traditional fisherman's jerseys were often knit from tightly spun worsted wool, sometimes with the natural lanolin left in for extra water resistance. vam.ac.uk
Wool has a few superpowers:
It insulates even when wet
It breathes, so you do not overheat the moment you move
It can be knit densely for weather or lighter for layering
That combination made it the uniform of people who work outside. Builders, farmers, sailors, loggers, anyone who needed warmth that could put up with some abuse.
Which, if we are honest, sounds a lot like the DNA of a proper Ballard sweater.
How We Got From Wool To Cashmere
At some point, the story bends from pure survival to a mix of survival and luxury. Enter cashmere.
Cashmere comes from the fine undercoat of goats in regions like Mongolia, Nepal, and Kashmir. It has been used for centuries in shawls and textiles, prized for its incredible softness, warmth, and light weight. The word “cashmere” itself traces back to Kashmir, where the famed shawls made from this fiber first caught European attention in the 18th and 19th centuries.
What makes cashmere different from regular wool:
Finer fibers, which translates to a softer hand feel
High warmth to weight, so you get serious insulation without bulky knits
Excellent ability to help regulate body temperature
Cashmere moved the sweater from something purely utilitarian into a space where comfort and refinement mattered too. The dockworker and the dinner guest could, in theory, wear the same garment.
For LANDOVERLAND, that is where the Scout cashmere crew lives. It is rooted in the old explorers sweater idea, but refined for a Pacific Northwest life that moves between a Ballard coffee shop, road trip to the mountains, and a late ferry ride back from Bainbridge. Warm enough to survive the pier. Clean enough to walk into a winter cocktail party.
Yak Wool: High-Country Grit Meets Modern Knitwear
If cashmere is the soft-spoken classic, yak wool is its mountain-trained cousin.
Yaks live on the high plateaus of the Himalayas, Tibet, and parts of Mongolia and Central Asia. Their fiber has been used for over a thousand years by nomadic communities to make clothing, tents, ropes, and blankets that stand up to brutal cold and wind.
The magic is in the down layer, often called khullu. These fibers are:
Very fine, with micron counts comparable to cashmere, which makes them soft against the skin
Exceptionally warm, with some tests suggesting yak down can be significantly warmer than merino wool at the same weight
Naturally breathable and moisture regulating, ideal for active use in cold conditions
Free of lanolin, which helps many people with wool sensitivities wear yak comfortably
For centuries, yak wool stayed mostly where it came from: in high mountain communities that needed it. Only in recent decades has it begun to appear in global knitwear as a true luxury fiber, right alongside cashmere.
At LANDOVERLAND, that is the story inside the Muscle yak wool sweater. It is not a fashion experiment. It is a continuation of what those original sweaters did for people who lived close to weather, just updated with a fiber that has been tested in places far harsher than a November storm over Puget Sound.
Why This History Matters In Ballard And The Pacific Northwest
The men’s sweater has always been a working garment first. Born in wet climates, built for people who earn their living in weather. That is why it feels so at home in the Pacific Northwest.
Ballard in particular is a crossroads. Old boatyards, shipwrights, and fishermen share streets with breweries, coffee shops, and design studios. You might spend the morning on a muddy trail, the afternoon in a meeting, and the evening around a backyard fire. One garment has to solve all three.
That is where the evolution from wool to cashmere to yak actually matters.
Traditional wool gave us the toughness and history
Cashmere gave us the comfort and refinement to move from trail to table
Yak wool gave us mountain grade warmth and performance without losing softness
In the Scout cashmere and the Muscle yak wool, we are not trying to reinvent the sweater. We are honoring its real story. Taking the fisherman’s jersey, the gansey, the early athletic “sweater,” and asking what that looks like on a foggy Saturday in Ballard in 2025.
A sweater you can wear to pick up hardware, meet friends at a bar on Market Street, then toss in the truck on your way to a cold campsite above Cle Elum.
The LANDOVERLAND Takeaway
When you pull a LANDOVERLAND sweater on, you are stepping into a long line of men who chose knitwear because they needed something that worked. Fishermen in the Channel Islands. Nomads on the Tibetan Plateau. Goat herders in Kashmir. Loggers and Tradesman of old Seattle.
We are just adding one more chapter.
Soft where it matters. Tough where it counts. Built for rain, wind, and a life that moves between saltwater, cedar, and concrete.
That is the real origin story of the men’s sweater, as we see it. And in Ballard, it is still being written.