Winter knitwear has long defaulted to dark, earthy shades, but a softer colour story is now running through the season. Lilac, butter yellow and other pale shades bring a welcome lightness to cold-weather dressing, and a pastel knit does most of the styling work on its own. Worn over familiar jeans, trousers or a woollen skirt, it changes an outfit that has been worn many times without needing the whole look to revolve around colour. For brands, that makes it a low-risk way to refresh core knitwear without reinventing the silhouette.
Retail shows how wide the price ladder is. Prada’s wool and cashmere crew-neck sweater in alabaster pink is £1,680, and Ssstein’s brushed cashmere sweater is £570. Loulou de Saison’s Anton cashmere sweater sits at £390. The high street covers the same shades for far less, with & Other Stories’ V-neck jumper at £47 and M&S’s crew-neck drop-sleeve relaxed-fit jumper in pale blue at £26. At the luxury end, Khaite’s Davin cashmere sweater top in a zesty pastel yellow is $1,280, while Zara’s brushed wool and cashmere sweater in the same family is $199. Soft yellow is being positioned as a new neutral, with the same versatility as grey or beige but more warmth.
On the runway, the evidence is more about styling and colour than a single silhouette. At Sson’s Copenhagen presentation, fine-knit V-neck sweaters were bunched up and layered with pastel-toned polos, or worn at the waist to resemble skirts. In Milan, the pale pink colour trend was noted as showing no signs of slowing, and designers pulled in pastel references across the season, with Valentino putting lavender and pale pink on a lace evening gown. Butter yellow is a carry-over from the previous winter, when many autumn/winter catwalks set the stage for a butter yellow takeover across everything from lightweight knits to heavy woollens. The momentum is not fading. Spring/Summer 2027 runways paired dusty pink, pale yellow and powder blue with tactile fabrics, including a pastel yellow cable-knit A-line mini dress with a matching cardigan, which suggests pastel knitwear will keep running into the next season. At Chloé’s SS27 show, front-row guests wore canary yellow, cherry red and lilac among neutrals, including a cropped lilac sweater with high-waisted denim.
Celebrity dressing has helped normalise the shade, though it plays out mostly off the formal red carpet. Knitwear tends to appear at street-style and press-tour moments. Emma Stone wore a creamy pale yellow Khaite sweater on a Good Morning America appearance in New York. Sabrina Carpenter wore an oversized butter yellow cable-knit sweater as a minidress, with a yellow Chanel bag. More recently, Gigi Hadid has used her own label to push butter yellow cardigans, and her Guest in Residence drop uses coastal blues, butter yellow, soft red, cream and pastel tones, with subtle stripes and textured finishes. The commercial signal is that celebrity-founder knitwear lines and mid-market brands are both treating pastel as a core colour rather than a spring accent.
India offers a natural setting. Winters are short and transitional, so lightweight knits in softer colours suit domestic demand better than heavy, dark wool. The country also has a growing base of design-led knitwear labels working with handknit and artisan techniques, including Meko Studio, Peoli, Oh KU, MARGN, Khajoor Studio, Bitch and Two Sticks and Taarini Anand. For these labels and for mass-market brands, the trend is mainly a colourway decision, one that can be tested on existing knit bases such as crew necks, cardigans and V-necks before committing to new styles.
Industry takeaway: pastel knitwear works because it asks little of the wearer and little of the product team. It sells in shade, layers with existing wardrobes, and extends from cashmere at the top of the market to acrylic blends at the bottom.
