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"The kilt arrived in a box of hand-me-downs from a friend with a taste for chic clothing and a daughter who grew quickly. My 7-year-old put it on and we both grinned. The kilt managed to be traditional yet scream &amp;quot;French!&amp;quot; I plotted: This would be the key piece in Daughter&amp;#039;s Christmas-photo outfit. Over the top she&amp;#039;d wear a Fair Isle sweater. I&amp;#039;d have to buy the sweater, but that would be easy; it&amp;#039;s a classic, everyone makes them. I started with the obvious sources. One had styles suitable for tailgate parties, or maple syrup gatherings. No Fair Isle. Another had a sweater they called a Fair Isle, but the pattern was wrong. It was as if all the designers thought, We&amp;#039;re so bored with the standard, let&amp;#039;s take our customers out of their comfort zone. I don&amp;#039;t know how to tell you this, designers, but we old-school shoppers like our clothing the way we like our cuisine: unfussy, recognizable, and describable in five words or less. I didn&amp;#039;t want a postmodern reinterpretation. I wanted the original goods.  As I was complaining to another mom, she nodded knowingly. &amp;quot;Last year I decided Rebecca had to have a toggle coat with a furry lining. Just a nice, classic coat, like you&amp;#039;ve seen your entire life. A Paddington coat. It became A Thing.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Did you ever find it?&amp;quot; I asked, certain this boded badly for my hunt. The nature of A Thing is that it must be deceptively simple \u2014 a shirt of a particular width of stripe and shade of blue. She said, blandly, &amp;quot;Oh, sure...eventually.&amp;quot; As in &amp;quot;Eventually, nuclear waste stops being so darn toxic and you can plant vegetables in it safely.&amp;quot; I searched no fewer than 35 Web sites and found exactly two classic Fair Isle sweaters. One&amp;#039;s got a big &amp;quot;RL&amp;quot; monogram on the front. At Ralph&amp;#039;s prices, I&amp;#039;m not advertising for him. The other costs $98. The only way Daughter gets a $98 sweater is if she lives in a display case and signs a notarized document promising not to grow.  I have preppy moms doing recon for me in the South and the Northeast, two areas more likely to produce classic children&amp;#039;s clothing than Los Angeles, my home, the town that gave the world formal hot pants. I grow cranky, but my standards do not waver. I see this Thing. It is a three-button Fair Isle yoke sweater. It doesn&amp;#039;t involve sequins or hoods. It&amp;#039;s timeless and someone has to be making it. Eventually, I will find it. And when I do, think of how great she&amp;#039;ll look in it at her high school graduation.  To find out more about the &amp;quot;QC Report&amp;quot; blogger, read our Web-exclusive interview with blogger Quinn Cummings. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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