N.Peal has sold cashmere out of London's Burlington Arcade since 1936, and its knitwear surfaces secondhand at a fraction of retail. What the label tells you, what it doesn't, and what to check before bidding.
Ply tells you how much yarn went into the sweater. It does not tell you how good that yarn was, and no secondhand listing will separate the two for you.
Ply is a count, not a quality mark. A 2-ply yarn twists two strands together, a 4-ply twists four, and the practical result is weight: 2-ply for something worn under a jacket, 3-ply and above for pieces that stand on their own in cold weather. N.Peal's range spans both ends, so the ply figure tells you what a garment is for rather than how well it was made.
What ply cannot tell you is fibre length or fineness, and this is where most buyers go wrong. Long-staple cashmere spun loosely will outlast short-staple cashmere spun tight, but nothing on a label distinguishes them and no knitwear house publishes micron counts at retail. Judge the yarn by handling it, or by how a comparable piece from the same era has aged.
Gauge is the more useful signal in a photograph. Count the stitches across a visible inch of the body: a dense, tight face at higher ply is the combination that holds structure over years, and it is legible in a good close-up in a way that fibre grade never is.
Pilling is fibre breakage working its way to the surface, and its distribution matters more than its presence. Isolated pills at the cuffs and under the arms are friction points on any worn sweater and comb out. A haze of pills across the chest and back means the yarn itself is going, and combing will thin it further rather than restore it.
Fully-fashioned knitwear is shaped on the machine rather than cut from a panel, so the seams follow the line of the garment. A failure there shows as a run or ladder in the knit rather than a split seam, and it spreads. Ask for a close photograph of the shoulder join and the underarm, which is where it starts.
Also ask what has been repaired. A well-executed reweave on a moth hole is invisible in a listing photo and entirely acceptable in a sweater bought at a third of retail, but it is worth knowing about before the price is set.
Sizing labels are the least reliable field in any secondhand cashmere listing. N.Peal has produced knitwear for decades across changing fit conventions and multiple markets, and a Medium from one period will not match a Medium from another. Treat the letter on the tag as a rough sort, nothing more.
The measurement to ask for is chest width flat, taken pit to pit with the garment laid out. Compare it against a sweater you already own and wear, doubled to a circumference if you prefer working that way. Sleeve length from the shoulder seam and body length from the high point of the shoulder are the two follow-ups worth the message.
Cashmere also relaxes with wear in a way that wool does not, particularly in the body. A piece that measures marginally snug will settle; one that measures marginally loose will settle further.
Ribbed and cable constructions hold their shape best on the resale market, because the structure is built into the stitch rather than the finishing. Heavyweight crewnecks in plain knit do nearly as well. Both categories tend to be the pieces that were worn hardest and washed least, which works in a buyer's favour.
Cashmere does not develop a patina. It blooms in the first few wears as the fibres open up, feels its best somewhere in the following year, and then begins to pill wherever it takes friction. Lightweight open-knit pieces run that cycle fastest and are the ones most likely to arrive already past it.
The pieces associated with the Craig-era Bond films carry a premium that has little to do with construction, which cuts both ways. It inflates the asking price on the recognisable styles and leaves the equivalent plain knits underpriced.
For a curated selection, explore the current listings on our men's sweater page and women's sweater page.