The want underneath the search: a knit fine enough to behave like tailoring, worn over a collar and under a jacket without a wrinkle of argument. This page scores who else knits that way, at every altitude, and who only photographs that way.
Checked and updated October 2026
The verdict, up front: seven names scored out of 100 on the published brand basis: fabric and cloth 30, construction and craft 20, fit range and sizing honesty 20, value 15, longevity 15. Asket wins at 92, keeping the standing score from its own page in this series, rows intact: on a page about the gauge, it wins because it is the only house here that prints its gauge, its micron, its ply and its costs on the product page, in sizes graded across three lengths. Sunspel is second at 85, standing, the neighbour mill one county over. Uniqlo is third at 84, standing, the same fibre honesty at a fiftieth of the anchor's ticket. William Lockie is fourth at 82, a new score derived in the open below from the two garments this site has scored, the weight answer to the anchor's fineness. John Smedley, the anchor, is fifth at 79, and the number is reproduced, not re-derived: it was set in the open on brands like Sunspel from the fullest knitwear record on this site, and this page audits the census rather than renumbering its own magazine. The named skip is H&M at 38, standing, the fine-knit idea with the knit left out.
What people actually want from John Smedley
The want under this search is a knit that behaves like a tailored layer: fine enough to slide under a blazer, warm enough to stand alone, and made by a mill that treats the gauge as a promise. John Smedley has knitted at Lea Mills in Derbyshire since 1784, and it is now in its eighth generation, by the maker's own account on the product pages checked for this ranking. The house's whole argument fits in two fibres and a band of numbers: extra-fine merino and Sea Island cotton, knitted at 24 to 30 gauge, fully fashioned so each panel is shaped on the machine rather than cut from a sheet of cloth, with every piece passing through fifty pairs of hands before it is finished. At 30 gauge a sweater stops reading as knitwear and starts reading as clothing: it sits over a collared shirt without bulk and under a jacket without a fight. The reader's question is the one this series exists to answer: who else answers the gauge question honestly, and at each altitude, what does the same fineness cost?
A note on altitude. This page reads the fine-knit register at five heights, because that is how the search is actually shopped: the systematiser, Asket in Stockholm, which publishes everything the mills keep private; the neighbour, Sunspel in Long Eaton, one county away and the same single-mill discipline in cotton jersey; the counter-argument, William Lockie in Hawick, which answers fineness with weight and proves the two are different virtues; the scale answer, Uniqlo, running genuine 19.5-micron merino at high-street prices; and the floor, where the knit is a texture printed onto a blend and the gauge is never mentioned, because there is no gauge worth mentioning. The anchor sits fifth on its own page, which is the honest outcome: its garments keep winning their rankings, and its house keeps declining to publish the receipts that win brand pages.
How the scores work, and the anchor's standing score
Same ruler as every brand ranking on this site, published on our methodology page: fabric and cloth out of 30, construction and craft out of 20, fit range and sizing honesty out of 20, value out of 15, longevity out of 15. Five scores on this page are standing scores reproduced exactly: Asket keeps its 92 and its rows (28, 19, 20, 12, 13) from brands like Asket; Sunspel keeps its 85 and its rows (24, 17, 18, 13, 13) and Uniqlo its 84 and its rows (22, 16, 19, 15, 12), both from brands like Sunspel; Zimmerli keeps its 73 and its rows (25, 18, 12, 5, 13), derived on that same page; and H&M keeps its 38 and its rows (9, 7, 12, 7, 3), derived across thirteen garments on its own page in this series. One number is new here, William Lockie's, and it is derived in the open in its call. The anchor's is handled the way the anchor on the last page handled its own: reproduced with its working, not renumbered.
John Smedley stands at 79: fabric 26, construction 18, fit 13, value 8, longevity 14. The score was derived in the open on brands like Sunspel from the garment record, and the census has only grown since. This site has now scored five Smedley garments, and four of them won their rankings: the Lundy crew neck at 87, the Tapton zip neck at 86, the Cherwell roll neck at 85, the Bryn cardigan at 84, and the Isis Sea Island polo at 79. The brand rows are what that record predicts. Fabric 26: the garment yarn and cloth rows run 26 to 28, merino at 30 gauge and Sea Island cotton, the finest published fibres in their categories; the brand row sits under the best of them because it grades the whole range. Construction 18: fully fashioned panels, hand finishing, garment rows of 17 to 19 across five categories. Fit 13: the honest deduction, and it is the same one the derivation printed, classic English cuts in a narrower welcome than the graded systems above it on this page; the garment fit rows run 11 to 18 because each grades one cut, and the brand row grades the door. Value 8: the Isis is £200 on the maker's own store today, and the Lundy is $432.90 at US retail today. Longevity 14: founded 1784, eighth generation, same mill, same garments refined rather than replaced. Add them: 26, 18, 13, 8, 14. The brand score is 79, standing, audited against five garments and unaltered.
Seven brands, ranked
Asket
US price checked today: The Merino Half Zip Sweater $320 at the maker's US store.
The call: the winner of this page does not out-knit the anchor, and its call should say so plainly: it out-publishes it, keeping the 92 and the rows from brands like Asket. Open the product page for its Merino Half Zip, checked today, and the gauge question this whole page is about is answered in a specification table: 12 gauge, 19.5-micron extra-fine merino, two-ply, fully fashioned, the yarn named to its mill and its farms, and a cost breakdown that prices the knitting at €34 of the ticket. Twelve gauge is a heavier knit than the anchor's 24 to 30, a deliberate mid-weight rather than a tailored layer, and on the anchor's own ground the anchor is finer. What Asket adds is everything around the knit: sizes graded across three lengths, which is what the fit row of 20 records, the only perfect fit score in this series; a permanent collection refined instead of replaced; and receipts for all of it. Its one scored knit on this site, The Merino Sweater, took 83 on our crew ranking with that perfect fit row. Buy the half zip here if the system, the sizes and the published gauge are the point. It is the discipline the search is looking for, with the working shown on the label.
Sunspel
Price checked today: the Extra-Fine Merino Half Zip £265 at the maker's store (about $350).
The call: the closest relative, keeping the 85 and the rows set on its own page, where it was the anchor. Sunspel is a jersey house first, Long Eaton cotton since 1860, and its knitwear is the sideline of a mill that perfected the garments worn under knitwear; graded on this page for the knit it does sell, the evidence is strong. Its Extra-Fine Merino Half Zip scored 82 on our quarter-zip ranking, second only to the anchor's Tapton, on a cloth row of 26: 19-micron merino from a named Piedmont spinner, knitted on Bentley frames, and the maker's product page, checked today at £265, prints the micron, the spinner's founding year and the machine type without being asked. That is the gauge question answered in the anchor's own dialect, one county over. The deductions are the standing ones: the range's centre of gravity is the cotton drawer, not the sweater rail, and the home store prices in sterling. Buy the half zip here if you want the anchor's fineness with the neighbour's hand-feel. It loses this page to the systematiser and beats the anchor on the welcome, which is exactly what its rows say.
Uniqlo
US price checked today: the Merino Sweater $49.90 at the maker's US store.
The call: the gauge question answered by a supply chain, keeping the 84 and the rows from brands like Sunspel. Uniqlo's knitwear record on this site is the most consistent in the register: its merino crew scored 75 on our crew ranking and its merino half-zip 76 on the quarter-zip ranking, both built on the same printed fact, 100% extra-fine merino at 19.5 microns, machine washable, with the pilling treatment described on the product page in plain language. The ticket is the argument: the Merino Sweater is $49.90 on the maker's US store today, roughly a ninth of the anchor's Lundy at US retail, which is what the value row of 15, the highest on this page, records. The deductions stand from its scoring pages: the knit is good rather than memorable, the finishing is industrial where the mills above it are hand-guided, and the longevity row of 12 prices a range whose top end churns with collaborations. Buy the merino crew here if the budget is the brief. It is the anchor's fibre at the anchor's opposite price, and the rows show exactly which points the saving cost: fabric 22 against 26, construction 16 against 18.
William Lockie
US prices at last check: the Leven crew typically $350 to $400 at US stockists; the maker's own site is a trade stock service and prints no consumer price, re-checked today.
The call: the counter-argument, and a new brand score derived in the open from the only evidence this magazine grades on, its own scored garments. Lockie has been scored here twice, and the two garments returned identical rows: the Leven crew neck at 82 and the lambswool cardigan at 82, each with yarn 26, construction 19, fit 14, value 8, longevity 15. The construction row of 19 was the best construction score on both of those rankings, the anchor's included. The brand rows are the garment rows, because the range is one idea executed the same way throughout: two-ply Geelong lambswool and cashmere, hand-finished in Hawick, where the house has knitted since 1875, in weights chosen for warmth rather than for sliding under a blazer. Add them: 26, 19, 14, 8, 15, and the brand score is 82. This is the page's proof that weight is not the crime the skip commits: Lockie's heavy knits are fully fashioned, honestly fibred and built to be repaired, and they beat the anchor here on construction and longevity while conceding the tailored layer entirely. Buy the Leven here if the knit is the outer garment and winter is the brief. It is what the anchor would look like if it had chosen warmth over fineness.
John Smedley
Prices checked today: the Lundy crew $432.90 at US retail; the Isis polo £200 at the maker's own store.
The call: the anchor, standing at the 79 derived in the open on brands like Sunspel and audited above against a census no other house on this page can match: five garments scored, four ranking wins, garment yarn and cloth rows between 26 and 28 every time. The case for the house is the gauge itself. The Lundy is 30-gauge extra-fine merino that behaves like a shirt with warmth; the Tapton holds the floor of the fine band at 24 gauge and won the quarter-zip ranking at 86; the Isis is Sea Island cotton knitted by the house that has worked the fibre longest, £200 on the maker's own store today. No other name here knits finer, and the fabric row of 26 is capped only by the range it grades. The deductions are printed with the praise, and they are the same ones the derivation published: a fit welcome of classic English cuts with no graded lengths, which the fit row of 13 records against Asket's 20 and Uniqlo's 19, and prices that assume the argument is already won, which the value row of 8 records. Buy the Lundy here if the knit goes under tailoring, the Isis if it goes over a collar in summer. It is the finest knitwear on this page, beaten by systems, welcomes and prices, and not by a single sweater.
Zimmerli
US price checked today: the Sea Island T-Shirt $229 at the maker's US store.
The call: the altitude, keeping the 73 and the rows derived on brands like Sunspel. Zimmerli answers the gauge question in cotton rather than wool: Sea Island interlock knitted in Switzerland and sewn by hand, the finest jersey in the business, worn as the layer under the knits this page ranks. Its relevance here is as the register's control for fineness at any price: the Sea Island T-shirt is $229 on the maker's US store today, up from the $219 that page's check found, and the fabric row of 25 is earned by a fibre record no one disputes. The deductions are the standing ones: the fit row of 12 for classic cuts in a thin distribution, and a value row of 5 that prices underwear at sweater money. It has no crew neck to set against the anchor's Lundy, and this page does not pretend otherwise: it is ranked because a reader pricing the finest knitted cotton in the world will meet this name, and its number should be waiting. Buy the Royal Classic and Sea Island lines here if the layer against the skin is where your money goes. On a knitwear page it is the honoured guest, and its score says so.
H&M
US price checked today: the Regular-Fit Knit Sweater $39.99 list, $31.99 on sale, at hm.com US.
The call: the control group, keeping the 38 and the rows derived across thirteen of its garments on its own page in this series. Every house above this one answers the gauge question with a number: 30 gauge, 24 gauge, 19.5 microns, two-ply Geelong, a costed €34 of knitting. The skip answers it with a photograph. Its knitwear is sold as texture, cable, waffle, brushed and ribbed surfaces hung in a row to read as substance, in blends whose fibre splits sit below the fold, at price architecture that assumes replacement: the Regular-Fit Knit Sweater is $39.99 list on its US store today and already $31.99 on sale. The garment record is the brand record in miniature. The one H&M knit scored piece by piece on this site, the Regular-Fit Fine-Knit Sweater, was sent home from our crew ranking at 40, with a yarn row of 7 and a longevity row of 2, the most expensive sweater on that page per presentable wear. A fine-knit name, a two-winter cloth, a texture where the gauge should be. The six names above are where the money goes instead.
The pattern under the ranking
Read the ladder and the fine-knit register explains itself: fineness is a publishing discipline before it is a knitting one, and every row on this page is a way of printing the number or avoiding it. The winner prints its gauge, micron, ply and cost breakdown on the product page and grades its sizes in three lengths, and the nine-point gap between 92 and the anchor's 79 is almost exactly the price of the receipts the anchor never published. The anchor keeps the crown that matters most to the search: the finest gauge in the business, proven five garments deep, four of them ranking winners. The weight answer proves the register's other virtue is real: Lockie's heavy lambswool carries the best construction rows on two of our rankings, because chunky was never the crime. The crime is below it, at the floor, where texture is photographed to impersonate construction and the specification is a mood. The scale answer prints its micron and charges $49.90 for it, which is why it stands third. And the altitude prints its fibre's island and charges $229, which is why it stands sixth. One name is deliberately handled differently on this page, and it is the anchor itself: already scored in this series, on brands like Sunspel, from a garment census that has since grown by a ranking winner, and confirmed rather than renumbered. When you shop this register, run the test the table below is built on: open the product page and look for the gauge and the micron. The houses that print them are the ranking. The house that prints only a texture is the skip.
| Brand | Score | The piece to buy | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asket | 92 | The Merino Half Zip Sweater | $320 |
| Sunspel | 85 | The Extra-Fine Merino Half Zip | £265 at the maker's store |
| Uniqlo | 84 | The Merino Sweater | $49.90 |
| William Lockie | 82 | The Leven Crew Neck | $350 to $400 at US stockists |
| John Smedley | 79 | The Lundy Crew Neck | $432.90 at US retail |
| Zimmerli | 73 | The Sea Island T-Shirt | $229 |
| H&M | 38 | None | Knit sweaters from $39.99 |
The Skip · 38/100
H&M is this page's named loser, and the charge is specific to this register. Every name above it, from the winner at 92 to the altitude at 73, is selling a version of the same idea: a named fibre, a printed gauge or micron, a factory you can point at, and a garment built to be kept. The skip sells the idea's surface. Its knitwear is texture first and specification nowhere, blends under photographs of cables and waffles, and the one garment this site has taken apart piece by piece, its Regular-Fit Fine-Knit Sweater, scored 40 with a longevity row of 2, which made it the most expensive sweater on its ranking per presentable wear. The brand score of 38 was not set for this page; it was derived on the house's own page from thirteen scored garments, knitwear prominent among them, and a magazine does not soften a derived number because the page changed. A man building the knit drawer this page is about will wear these garments more than almost anything else he owns. The six names above the skip are selling the wear. The skip is selling the first photograph, and charging again next winter.
Which one to buy
If you buy one thing: the Asket Merino Sweater, the register's best system at the anchor's own game, or the Smedley Lundy at $432.90 at US retail if you were really shopping the anchor, the finest gauge this page sells. If the knit goes under a blazer: the Lundy, 30 gauge, the sweater our crew ranking crowned at 87 for exactly that job. If hand-feel is the brief: the Sunspel half zip at £265 and its Bentley-frame knit, second on our quarter-zip ranking at 82. If warmth is the brief: the Lockie Leven, two-ply Geelong lambswool from the weight answer at No. 4. If the budget is the brief: the Uniqlo Merino Sweater at $49.90, the printed micron without the mill. If the layer under the knit is the project: Zimmerli's Sea Island tee at $229. The other pages in this family score the neighbour on brands like Sunspel, the winner on brands like Asket, and the skip's full derivation on brands like H&M.
Questions, answered
What brand is most like John Smedley?
Sunspel is the closest in spirit: a single-mill English house of the same discipline, one county over, standing at 85. Asket wins the page at 92 by publishing what the anchor never has, its gauge, its micron, its ply and its cost breakdown on every product page, in graded sizes. William Lockie is the same seriousness answered with weight instead of fineness, a new score of 82 derived in the open on this page. Uniqlo is the gauge question answered at industrial scale, standing at 84.
Is John Smedley worth the money?
Garment by garment, and this site has scored five of them: four won their rankings. The Lundy crew neck won the crew ranking at 87, the Tapton zip neck won the quarter-zip ranking at 86, the Cherwell roll neck won the turtleneck ranking at 85 and the Bryn cardigan won the cardigan ranking at 84. The Isis Sea Island polo scored 79, and it is £200 on the maker's own store today. The honest cost sits in the brand's value row of 8: the Lundy is $432.90 at US retail today, and nothing about the house is priced gently. What the money buys is the finest gauge in the business, fully fashioned in one Derbyshire mill since 1784.
Why does John Smedley score 79 here when its sweaters score in the 80s?
Because a brand score grades the whole house and a garment score grades one piece. The Lundy at 87 is one sweater at its best. The brand rows grade the range a man actually meets: fabric 26 for merino and Sea Island cotton at 24 to 30 gauge, construction 18 for fully fashioned knitting through fifty pairs of hands, fit 13 for classic English cuts in a narrower welcome than the houses above it, value 8 for the prices printed on this page, and longevity 14 for a mill in its eighth generation. The score of 79 was derived in the open on brands like Sunspel from this garment record, and this page reproduces it rather than renumbering it.
John Smedley or Asket: which should I buy?
Asket, if the system is the point: its knitwear is graded in three lengths with a fit row of 20, its product pages print the gauge, the micron and the cost breakdown, and its Merino Half Zip is $320 against the Lundy's $432.90 at US retail. Smedley, if the gauge is the point: 30-gauge merino that slides under a blazer like a shirt with warmth, Sea Island cotton knitted by the house that has made it since 1784, and a hand-finished weightlessness no 12-gauge knit attempts. The scores are 92 and 79, and the gap is the price of the receipts one house prints and the other keeps private.
Why is H&M the skip on this page?
Because its brand score was derived across thirteen of its own garments on its own page in this series, and knitwear is where the record is worst. The one H&M knit this site has scored garment by garment, the Regular-Fit Fine-Knit Sweater, was sent home from the crew ranking at 40 with a longevity row of 2: a fine-knit name on a cloth that does not survive its second winter presentably. The brand rows, fabric 9, construction 7, fit 12, value 7, longevity 3, are the fine-gauge idea with every discipline removed, texture photographed to read as substance and the gauge never printed, because there is no gauge worth printing.
How this ranking stays honest
Scores follow our published methodology and are re-checked on the cadence in the byline. Five scores on this page are standing scores reproduced with their rows: Asket's 92, Sunspel's 85, Uniqlo's 84, Zimmerli's 73 and H&M's 38. The anchor's 79 is a standing score of the derived kind, set in the open on brands like Sunspel from its garment record, and this page's treatment of it is printed in full above: an audit against a census that has grown to five garments, rows confirmed, number unaltered, because a magazine that renumbers its own houses quietly has no scores worth reading. One number is new on this page and is labelled as such in its call: William Lockie's 82, derived from its two scored garments, whose rows were identical. Two names were considered and not ranked. Derek Rose stands at 69 in this series, derived on brands like Sunspel, and is rested here because its centre of gravity is the night drawer and it has no scored knitwear garment; if one is scored, the family reopens. Fedeli, the Monza knitwear house our Italian brands ranking credits with sweaters knitted fine enough to wear like a second shirt, has no garment scored on this site and a distribution too thin to price to this page's standard today; it is named here so the omission reads as a decision, not an oversight. Prices are checked today and printed in the currency the maker's store charges: Asket's, Uniqlo's, Zimmerli's and H&M's from their US stores, Sunspel's and the anchor's Isis in pounds from their own stores with the Lundy's US retail figure beside it, and Lockie's as the US stockist band from its garment pages, because the maker's own site is a trade stock service that prints no consumer price, re-checked today. Prices move: Zimmerli's Sea Island tee is $229 today against $219 when brands like Sunspel checked it, and the newer check is the one printed here. The photography is this magazine's licensed scene photography from our own bank; no brand's campaign or lookbook imagery is used anywhere on the page. The bank holds no Lea Mills interior and no Sea Island cotton frame, so the photographs stand for the register, the fold, the texture and the garment class, not for the factories, and the page says so here rather than borrow a maker's own imagery to close the gap. When a maker changes cloth, price or model materially, the score moves and the move is noted here.