A twinset is a matching pair of women's knitwear worn together: a sleeveless or short-sleeved sweater, and a cardigan (a sweater that buttons up the front) in the same colour and the same wool. You put on the sweater, then the cardigan over it. Because they match exactly, the two pieces look like one outfit, which is where the name comes from. The word carries a strong picture with it, and that picture matters more than the clothes. A twinset is British, from about the 1950s, and it says neat, careful, respectable, slightly conservative — the sort of thing a headmistress, a shop manager or the Queen might wear. "Twinset and pearls" is a set phrase: a twinset worn with a string of pearls, standing for a certain kind of proper middle-class Englishwoman. If a writer calls someone "a twinset-and-pearls sort of woman", they are describing her whole character, not her clothes. So you will meet this word much more often in novels, in newspapers and in jokes about class than in a clothes shop. Younger people do not really buy them, and Americans mostly say "a sweater set". The clothes still exist, but the word now works mainly as a picture of a type of person.

（女裝）兩件式針織套裝——無袖或短袖上衣＋同色同料的開襟外套。英式用語，帶有「端莊、保守、貴婦氣」的聯想；twinset and pearls 幾乎等於在說某種一絲不苟的英國仕女。