Kitten Sweaters Were All The Rage

Every tween and teenage girl living in the ’50s and ’60s wanted one. Or, better, two. A Kitten sweater set was a status symbol, nonpareil.

The old stone mill on the Clyde River in Lanark, Ontario dated to the mid-1800s, and a Toronto family bought it in the 1940s, turning it into a factory and outlet store for the Kitten clothing label — importing yarn, dyeing it on site, and knitting it into sweaters and cardigans.

They might as well have come from the runways of Paris for how greatly they were coveted. Each year, new colours were released — all of them swoon-worthy — and the mill became a huge tourist attraction, with buses coming from all over to shop at the popular mill store.

And they could be seen at the Ex, at the fashion shows in the Queen Elizabeth Building — which my friend Doreen Louie Armstrong and I never missed. We would queue to get in, then stand mesmerized in front of the roped-off Kitten sweater display for what seemed like ages.

The display involved live models interspersed with mannequins. You couldn’t tell them apart. We stood there waiting, watching for a real girl to move.

I dreamed of owning the turquoise sweater set. Doreen fancied the yellow.