Jumpers vs. Hoodies: The eternal question

Throughout childhood, like most people I was not responsible for the acquirement of my own clothes, I could have a small influence in that like most children I could point out the sort of clothes I believed my friends might wear (a guess being the best indicator of this information as I rarely saw my school friends outside of the educational setting - an accidental effect of rarely venturing far from my house, which I would later attempt to emulate in my working life) but for the most part, the responsibility for keeping me in decent clothing fell to my mother.

Shortly after leaving school, I came upon the realisation that this was now entirely up to me, no conversation took place, there was no physical representation of a torch was passed to me from my progenitor, I simply took the paltry wages from my part time job, ventured into the local town centre and entered a clothes shop to complete my first independent clothing purchase.

My friends of the time were into skateboarding, so naturally I (mostly unsuccessfully except in the relative safety of Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3) attempted to do this too, as a result, the clothing of choice at the time was baggy jeans and hooded jumpers, so I would become part of the (mostly unfairly) vilified hooded youth culture.

A collection of 3 blue skate branded hoodies became well lived in until my late teenage / early adult years would endow me with slightly more colourful tastes.

My hoodies would become forgotten and presumably lost over the subsequent years and in the eternal question that has troubled clothing manufacturers and fashion philosophers for thousands of years, my allegiances switched and I sat firmly in the camp of the traditional woolly jumper, the hoods had never even been used, what the hell did I need one for?

I was happy and contented and probably wearing one of my woolly jumpers when my entire upper body clothing world view was shattered forever, it was shattered by a discovery that would change my life. That discovery was the zip, obviously not the zip as a whole, I had plenty of experience of zips, they often held together the top part of my trousers and held my coins securely in my wallet, but I discovered the zip up hoodie, I could wear something warm and significantly it could be put on and taken off without heaving to be pulled over my head.

Over the coming years, in a reversal of fortunes and a jumper based parody of what had taken place in the past, my collection of woolly jumpers would fall into disuse and my collection of zip up hoodies would grow.

I cannot help with the eternal question being posed as a whole, but for now at least, my tent is firmly pitched in the hoodie camp.

The good thing about a tent though is that it is  temporary structure that can be moved at any time.