Cosby Sweaters: The iconography of knitting

The Cosby Show may have been a convention-defying sitcom about an affluent black family in Brooklyn Heights, but one of its most lasting legacies is the collection of brilliant and graphically intensive sweaters worn by Bill Cosby's character Dr. Cliff Huxtable. Dubbed "Cosby Sweaters," these gloriously wild sweaters defined a fashion trend as well as an era.

Although Cosby Sweaters were the butt of many a sartorial joke during the decades following the show's run in the 1980s, the tide is turning. Whether being worn ironically or nostalgically, Cosby Sweaters are decidedly making a return. Celebrities are being spotted in wacky sweaters, and thrift stores are being rapidly cleaned out of their vintage, vibrant sweater specimens.

Image courtesy Flickr/Felix Jackson, Jr.

History
The Cosby sweater originated partly out of technical requirements for the show. Dr. Cliff Huxtable's wardrobe at work would have been very formal: Suits, perhaps, or a doctor's lab coat over a button-down shirt and a pair of slacks. But the show wanted to feature Dr. Huxtable at home and relaxed, thus the sweater (which he often wore over a button-down shirt to make it a little more dressy) was chosen as Cliff's at-home attire of choice.

However, there was a problem. Your basic sweater knit in a stockinette stitch will often have a slightly different variation in tension between the knit and purl rows. This ever so subtle difference creates a strobing or striped visual effect on the cameras that were being used to film the show. The effect was most obvious in a solid-colored sweater. It made sense to choose highly-patterned sweaters for Cosby's wardrobe, then, since the patterns would help hide the striped effect.

A sweater also wouldn't shift as much between takes, which makes it ideal for a television production concerned with maintaining the visual continuity of the show.

Most of Cosby's sweaters were made by Perry Ellis. They considered sweaters made by an Australian label called Coogi, but Coogi's line was deemed too "extreme." The show's demand for sweaters - thousands all told - included sweaters from mainstream department stores, a few one-of-a-kind hand-knit creations, independent Dutch textile artist Koos Van Den Akker, and sweaters loaned from big name design houses, particularly Missoni.

Some of the sweaters were custom knit by a Boston architecture student, in collaboration with the show's costume designer. The architecture student had sent photographs of her previous pieces to the show, and on the strength of these pieces she was commissioned to make custom sweaters of the NYC skyline with fireworks, and another piece with track runners to celebrate an episode where Dr. Huxtable participated in the Penn Relays.

Image courtesy Flickr/huppypie

DIY Cosby Sweater
Interested in knitting your own tribute to the Cosby Sweater? One approach is to search eBay for "vintage 80s sweater knitting pattern." However, I had more luck searching for "vintage 90s sweater knitting pattern." It seems that the knitting pattern industry was somewhat behind the fashion trends in those days.

When choosing yarn for your project, obviously you want to go as colorful as possible. When I think of a Cosby Sweater, I think of the color scheme of a vintage Keith Haring print. Any one of Haring's prints contemporary to the 80s would be an excellent color scheme model.

Another form of Cosby Sweater is the busy geometric print in similar earth tones. Take shades of rust, brown, gray, and the like, and then construct an intricate geometric pattern involving lines and rectangles. This is the second form of Cosby Sweater: less garish, but just as mesmerizing.

If you want to be perfectly historically accurate, your Cosby Sweater should be knit in a 100 percent acrylic yarn. I wore many Cosby Sweaters myself, back in the Cosby days. It's a good thing that the sweaters were machine washable, because they were also as hot as they were odor-attracting. And there is the unforgettable experience of taking a wet acrylic sweater out of the washing machine and cringing at the "squeaky" feeling of damp acrylic.

The fit of a Cosby Sweater should be baggy, hanging straight down from the shoulders with only a minimal amount of tapering to the waist (if any). When in doubt, make the sleeves wider: Dolman sleeves were big in the 80s, both literally and figuratively.

Main image courtesy Flickr/TheUglySweaterShop