Burberry Sweater Sizing: Letters, Anchors and a Vintage Size 5

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A Burberry sweater publishes one length and one fit word. Men's cashmere crewnecks read 68 cm / 26.8 in at UK L; the lightweight wool crewneck reads 65.5 cm / 25.8 in at UK M; women's cashmere reads 60 cm / 23.6 in at UK S and the heavyweight wool-cashmere 64 cm / 25.2 in at the same UK S. The anchor letter changes with the yarn, so two published lengths are not directly comparable.

A Burberry sweater publishes one length figure and one fit word. On the men’s cashmere crewneck that figure is 68 cm / 26.8 in at UK L; on the lightweight wool crewneck it is 65.5 cm / 25.8 in at UK M; women’s cashmere reads 60 cm / 23.6 in at UK S and the heavyweight wool-cashmere 64 cm / 25.2 in at the same UK S. The anchor letter moves with the yarn.

This guide was assembled from seventeen Burberry sweater pages read on 4 November 2026, across the US, UK, rest-of-world, Kuwait and Turkey storefronts, plus the men’s knitwear charts the house publishes and three secondhand listings that carry a tape measure alongside the label. Each row in the tables below gives the item number, the fit word exactly as printed, the length in centimetres and inches tied to a named size, the fibre composition and, where the page prints one, the height of the model wearing it. Nothing here is inferred from a photograph, and where two Burberry storefronts disagree about the same item number, both readings are shown rather than averaged.

What the neck label says now, and what it said in 1995

Current Burberry knitwear is lettered. The men’s pages run from XS to XXXL, the women’s pages use letters as well, and the letter is the only size information on the woven label at the back neck. A Burberry London sweater from the mid-1990s carries a number instead, usually 4 or 5, with no letter anywhere on the garment. That single change is behind most of the confusion around this search term, because a numeric label from 1995 and a UK numeric size from today look identical in a listing photo and mean different things. The vintage number describes a fit block from a discontinued production run; the modern UK number describes a body measurement on a chart that Burberry still publishes.

Searches for Burberry sweater size 6 and size 7 sit on top of the same problem. A size 6 can be the UK number on a women’s coat, where Burberry’s chart gives a 84 cm bust and a 67 cm waist; it can be a vintage knit label; or it can be a children’s age size. Only the first of those is a live label with a published measurement behind it, and this guide treats the others as resale questions to be settled with a tape rather than a chart.

The knitwear ladder Burberry keeps separate from its tailoring

Burberry publishes two men’s charts, and the one that governs sweaters is headed casual shirts, knitwear, T-shirts, polos, swimwear and underwear. It runs from XS to XXXL with no Italian number column at all, which is the first thing a buyer arriving from a coat page will not expect.

The step between letters is 6 cm of chest, and that is the number worth carrying away. The tailored ladder on the same site, the one over coats and jackets, steps 4 cm per size from 90 cm at UK/IT 44 to 122 cm at UK/IT 60. So the knitwear ladder covers a wider body range in seven rows than the tailored ladder covers in nine, and the two agree only at two points: 102 cm, where the tailored 50 and the casual M meet, and 114 cm, where the tailored 56 and the casual XL meet. A man who takes a 50 jacket and reads across to knitwear lands on M with 102 cm behind it. A man who takes a 48 jacket finds no casual row at 98 cm and has to choose between S at 96 cm and M at 102 cm, a 4 cm decision that the chart does not make for him.

Length is anchored to a different letter on cashmere and on wool

Every men’s sweater page prints one length, and the letter it is anchored to is not fixed. Across the nine men’s pages checked, the four cashmere crewnecks are anchored to UK L and the five lightweight wool crewnecks are anchored to UK M. The figure and its anchor travel together, so the anchor has to be read before any two lengths are compared.

The nine rows hold three separate traps. The first is the anchor: a buyer comparing the 68 cm cashmere against the 66.5 cm wool is comparing an L against an M, so the 1.5 cm gap between the printed figures cannot be read as the gap on one body, and the direction of the real difference is not something either page states. The second is the inch column, which prints 65.5 cm as 25.7 in on the two older Check Trim items and as 25.8 in on the two newer ones; 65.5 cm is 25.79 in, so the newer print is the accurate one and the older one is truncated. The third is the fit word: 65.5 cm at UK M describes both a regular fit and a classic fit, on four different item numbers.

Two sweaters at 65.5 cm, two fit words, one length

The Check Trim family is the cleanest illustration of what a published length can and cannot tell you. Items 81121481 and 81121471 are printed as regular fit with the sentence fits true to size, take your normal size; items 81306121 and 81306131 in the same style name are printed as classic fit with the identical sentence and the identical 65.5 cm at UK M. The fibre is the same 100% wool, and the two versions are photographed on models of 187 cm and 191 cm. So the same length figure is doing duty for two cuts that Burberry’s own vocabulary says are different, and nothing on the page quantifies the difference.

The cashmere blend jersey sweater 81325231 makes the point from the other direction. It is cut slim, described as lightweight cashmere blend jersey rather than a knit, and published at 68 cm at UK L, exactly the length of the classic-fit cashmere crewneck beside it. A buyer who ranks these two by length alone would conclude they hang identically. What separates them is width and drape: a jersey-knit body with 1% elastane follows the torso, while a classic-fit 98% cashmere knit holds its own line. Length ranks hem position. It says nothing about how much room is inside the garment, and Burberry does not publish a chest measurement on any sweater page checked.

The women’s block: 60, 64 and 52.5 cm, and three different anchors

Women’s knitwear is lettered, and the anchor letter changes with the style rather than staying fixed: three cashmere crewnecks publish at UK S, four wool-cashmere crewnecks publish at UK S, and the cotton-wool sweater publishes at UK XS. The anchor column has to be read first, because a 52.5 cm figure anchored to XS is a smaller garment than its number suggests beside a 60 cm figure anchored to S.

Two facts in that table do not fit the tidy version of the story. The cotton-wool sweater 81223431 is anchored to UK XS, not S, so its 52.5 cm is a smaller garment than the number suggests when set beside the 60 cm cashmere; and the same item number is described as classic fit on the Kuwait storefront and regular fit on the rest-of-world storefront, which means the fit word is a regional page title as much as a cutting instruction. The inch column on that page reads 20.1 in, while 52.5 cm converts to 20.67 in, so the centimetre figure and the inch figure on Burberry’s own page disagree by about 1.5 cm. Where the two disagree, the centimetre column matches the tape.

The letter-to-number bridge matters because women’s coats are sized in UK numbers and women’s knitwear is not. On the chart Burberry publishes, UK 4 carries letter XS, UK 6 carries S, UK 10 carries M, UK 14 carries L and UK 18 carries XXL, with a 4 cm bust step between most rows. A woman who wears a UK 10 trench is therefore an M in knitwear. That mapping is the only bridge the site offers: the knitwear pages print the letter and never the number, and the chart that carries both is the clothing chart rather than a knitwear-specific one, so the letter is a start rather than a measurement.

Why the sleeve column in the chart is not a sleeve length

The arm column in Burberry’s knitwear chart runs 84.5 cm at XS to 93.5 cm at XXXL, and those figures are not shoulder-seam sleeve lengths. They are the Japanese neck-to-cuff measure, printed as 裄丈 on the chart page, taken from the centre back of the neck across the shoulder and down the arm to the cuff. A shoulder-seam sleeve on a men’s L sweater is typically 62 cm to 66 cm, so a buyer who reads 89 cm as a sleeve length will conclude the arm is 25 cm too long and reject a garment that would have fitted.

That distinction has a practical consequence beyond the chart: Burberry never publishes a shoulder-seam sleeve length on a sweater page at all. The page gives body length only. So a tall buyer with a normal chest cannot answer the single question that decides whether a sweater works for them, and the sleeve on a knit is the one measurement that cannot be altered without rebuilding the armhole. Ask for it flat, from the shoulder seam to the cuff edge, with the rib relaxed and then stretched, because a ribbed cuff on these styles carries 1% to 2% elastane and will gain 3 cm to 5 cm when pulled.

What the fibre list predicts about the second winter

The composition line on a Burberry sweater page is more useful than it looks, because it says where the elastane sits. On the men’s cashmere crewneck the body is 98% cashmere, 1% elastane, 1% polyamide and the trims are 97% cashmere, so the stretch is in the garment, not only at the edges. On the Knight Wool Cashmere women’s sweater the body is 71% wool and 29% cashmere with no elastane at all, while the trim carries 1% elastane and 1% polyamide. A 100% wool body with an elastic trim relaxes across the chest and holds at the hem, which is the opposite of what a buyer expects from the word heavyweight.

Care instructions point the same way. Every sweater page checked says specialist dry clean, with no hand-wash option offered, and the wool-cashmere and fine-knit wool pieces are made in Italy while the cashmere crewnecks and the cotton-wool sweater are listed as imported. For a knit that will be worn weekly, the relevant question is not which size to buy but whether the body will hold its shape between cleans, and the fibre line answers that: cashmere with 1% elastane recovers, 100% wool gradually takes the shape of the wearer, and a cotton-wool 50/50 blend at midweight behaves like neither.

A vintage Burberry London size 5 measures like a modern M

Secondhand listings are where the numeric label question actually gets asked, and the listings themselves carry the answer, because most resellers who know the label also put a tape on the garment.

The number is a fit block, not a measurement, and the table shows why that matters: two men’s size-5 pieces differ by 4 cm in back width and 2 cm in length, one being a vest and one a crewneck. A third listing in the same size range describes a size 4 lambswool vest as fitting men’s M/L, which is the same block boundary read from the other side. None of these labels carries a chest figure, so the only reliable approach on a vintage piece is to ask for pit-to-pit, length and sleeve, and to compare those against a sweater that already fits rather than against a chart built for current production.

Photographs settle the knit, not the fit

What a photograph does settle is construction: whether the neck is a crew or a polo collar, whether the trims are ribbed, whether the hem is straight or elasticated, and whether the check is knitted in or applied. Those are the facts that decide how a sweater will behave after ten wears. What it never settles is size, because a knit photographed on a 176 cm model and the same knit on a 191 cm model look like two different garments, and Burberry’s own pages do exactly that within one style family.

What to ask for when the label is not enough

Five figures taken flat answer a sweater size question: chest from underarm seam to underarm seam, body length from the highest shoulder point to the hem, shoulder width seam to seam, sleeve length from the shoulder seam to the cuff, and the depth of the ribbed hem. Add the item number or a screenshot, and the letter you normally take in a jacket, because the knitwear ladder and the tailored ladder only meet at two sizes. With those in hand the published length becomes usable: 68 cm at UK L tells you where the hem sits once you know your own length, and the 6 cm chest step between letters tells you what the next size up actually buys.

Browse the Clothing Catalog or send your five figures on WhatsApp with the item number and the letter you wear in outerwear. The figures above are published references collected for research, not a statement about any particular piece in the catalog. For the same house on jersey, the Burberry hoodie sizing guide works through the lengths printed on hoodie pages; the Burberry trench coat size guide covers the UK, US and Italian columns on outerwear; the Moncler jacket size guide shows a house that publishes number sizes instead of letters; and the fabric quality guide explains how fibre content and knit structure decide whether a garment keeps its shape.

The Burberry pages and listings behind these figures

Every figure here was read on 4 November 2026. Sweater pages change with each collection and a style that has run its course may no longer be live, but the figures remain a record of how Burberry sizes knitwear: one letter, one length, one anchor, and a fibre line that says more about the second winter than the first fitting.