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The phrase “sexy cardigan” is a bit of an oxymoron. The modest button-up sweater is best known as a cover-up for a chilly summer office or bat mitzvah attire. It’s the uniform of nursing homes. It’s meek Peggy Olson from Mad Men when she shuffled papers. It’s for class suck-ups and vanilla valedictorians. But look closely and the style signature of squares can have a cheeky pin-up touch: The September 1998 issue of Vogue, for instance, rounded up eight soft-hued cardigans and their skimpy tanks and called them “Double Trouble.” Vogue Market Editor Alexandra Gurvitch puts it bluntly: “Cardigans are not just for good girls.”
Take it from Rose McGowan in 1999’s Jawbreaker. Her character, an inky-haired high school seductress turned murderer, opted for only thin purple and pink cardigans that were cropped to reveal a sinister slice of tummy. The cardigan also had a late-’90s moment thanks to Cameron Diaz’s bombshell character in There’s Something About Mary, who wore a modest cardigan with a cleavage-baring slinky tank top. In Bowfinger, Heather Graham, who played a dopey but sexy starlet, donned a canary yellow incarnation with fur-collar trim that at times showed off her navel. To get the look, opt for a fire-engine red Alaïa cardigan that hits just below the lower rib for some rude-chic appeal or a Balenciaga newspaper-print piece fastened by one or two buttons.
