Catherine Deneuve in “À nous deux”, 1979. Les Films 13, Cinévidéo
Cast Out with Love is a wonderful, poetic short visual story written by Lauren Williams, and directed by Greg Dennis, revealing the beauty, history and craft hidden in a traditional hand-knitted Cornish Gansey jumper. It is part of what and who local fishermen are, it is part of a community and its identity. It’s not just a simple garment, it’s every generation woven in its tweaks.
Watching it recently rekindled my fascination with style pieces that have their own storied past, that are pieces of menswear history – that’s often the case when fashion is born of utility, and that’s usually when you can put an equal mark between fashion and style. And just like the Gansey (or Guernsey after the island by the same name) jumper, the history of the Aran sweater is just as beautiful and intricate as the rich array of stitch techniques that goes into its hand-knitting.
The garment has been worn by the fishermen of the Aran Islands (its birth place), off the western coast of Ireland, for hundreds of years. Not only has it kept generations of Irish fishermen warm trough their harsh and unforgiving winters, but it is a distinctive item, a work of local art and a reflection of the islanders’ lives and families. Each region and clan developed its own knitting pattern, carefully constructed (and guarded – rather memorised than written down, passed from generation to generation) and which can contain any combination of stitches, none of them incidental. They carried important information and had seafaring connections. The sweater was a badge of belonging to specific fishing communities and could be used to identify a specific member of a crew drowned at sea. The stich designs are inspired by Celtic art, architecture and design, and each stich conveys a unique meaning. The cable stitch is a symbol of the fisherman’s ropes and represents luck and safety at sea; the diamond depicts, some say, the small stonewalled fields of the island or, according to others, the fishing net mesh, and is a wish of success and wealth; the zig zag stitch represents the twisting cliff paths, while the tree of life is one of the original stitches of the fisherman sweater and it symbolises the importance of the clan and unity within. As for the traditional cream hue, it comes from the undyed, 100 percent virgin wool the authentic Aran sweater is made of. Every single design detail represents a story in itself.
Fair Isle, part of the northern Scottish Shetland Islands, came with its own distinctive patterning for knitwear, which is said to have come from Spain, with the seamen stranded after the breakup of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Along with these design influences, particular sheep breeds and natural dyes local to the landscape have also contributed to the distinctive look of Fair Isle knits. They continue to be produced by hand on Fair Isle today.
It’s easy to understand why this storied garment translates well in movies.
In Les Aventuriers, Alain Delon, Lino Ventura and Joanna Shimkus all master the navy nautical sweater while out at sea. They need garments that stand up to the task. The sweater, navy, classic, with a terrific texture, does that. It’s an item so much part of a sailor’s life or of someone who lives by the sea that we also get to see it on the little boy, Laetitia’s cousin, on his shore expeditions. It’s weighty and tight enough to shield the brisk air and sea water, intuiting at a harsh life by the sea, but also keeping him comfortable and free to play and dream of adventures. And maybe these youthful practicality will cast the most light on his own style when he grows up.
Catherine Deneuve and Jacques Dutronc in “À nous deux”, 1979. Les Films 13, Cinévidéo
In Claude Lelouch’s 1979 film À nous deux (Us Two), Simon (Jacques Dutronc) and Françoise (Catherine Deneuve) are both in hiding in the countryside, in Provence. He, the son of a criminal, has himself just broken out of prison. She comes from bourgeoisie but is also wanted by the police, having her own troubled past she is trying to leave behind. Together they will try to make it to the other side of the Atlantic, to Quebec and then New York. The notion of linear time is left behind in exchange of a meandering narration and it is actually the characters’ costumes that inform us on the story timeline. We know, when we see Catherine in her chunky knitted cardigan with buttons atop a turtleneck atop a crew-neck jersey and in her corduroy trousers, all in muted colours, that she is the farthest away she can be from her former bourgeois life. She is in hiding, desperately in want to escape from her past, so her clothes play the part perfectly: they are ambiguous, nothing to attract the attention. The beauty of it all is that she emanates warmth and natural beauty, sans make-up and fancy clothes. We get to see a Deneuve freed from the image and sexuality signaled through clothes and an association with fashion (she wore YSL in Buñuel’s Belle de jour and again in Truffaut’s Mississippi Mermaid), as we had the joy to see in Le sauvage, from 1975.
The other sweater Carherine wears can hardly be seen in the film. We only get a proper look at it in the photos taken on the movie set, when she is in the boat, as seen in the opening image here. It is modeled on the maritime seafaring standard and the fisherman’s treacherous vocation. Her whole look here is nautical: navy knitted sweater, navy serge trousers, white socks and navy penny loafers. The clothes are all clearly oversize, quite possibly provided by the men on the ship. Every fisherman knows that outerwear is essential, that they are at the mercy of the elements, their lives constantly at stake. Every traveler in hiding knows that waiting is an inconvenience. The call of the sea comes naturally, just as the fisherman’s occupational clothing is purely practical. Françoise’s clothes evoke real people working at maritime jobs, wearing layers of knit sweaters to keep them warm and dry. They most certainly kept Catherine comfortable, too, during the shooting in the freezing cold of Canada. “The best place to live is “a lighthouse or a fisherman’s hut,” Thoreau said almost two centuries ago. Maybe the best place for Françoise to free herself from the past and find herself is at sea.
Catherine Deneuve and Jacques Dutronc in “À nous deux”, 1979. Les Films 13, Cinévidéo
MORE STORIES
Impossible not to think of her: Catherine Deneuve in Mississippi Mermaid
Simplicity: The brevity of film costume in Les Aventuriers
Catherine Deneuve in Le sauvage
