Using data from The Neighborhood Archive, Owen Phillips charted the color of every sweater Mister Rogers wore on his PBS television program from 1979 to 2001.
Some sweaters were worn once and then never again, like the neon blue cardigan Rogers wore in episode 1497. Others, like his harvest gold sweaters, were part of Rogers’ regular rotation and then disappeared. And then there were the unusual batch of black and olive green sweaters Rogers wore exclusively while filming the “Dress-Up” episodes in 1991.
Some things about the sweaters and Mister Rogers:
- His mother knit many of the sweaters. Sorry, MISTER ROGERS’ MOTHER KNIT HIS CARDIGAN SWEATERS! I have not heard a more perfect detail about anything ever. He talks about his mom and the sweaters in this video — “I guess that’s the best thing about things. They remind you of people.” (The original video is gone and I couldn’t track it down, but here’s another one of him talking about his mom’s sweaters.)
- As you can see from the visualization above, Mister Rogers’ sweaters got darker as the show progressed. I will not speculate about what that might have meant.
- The Mister Rogers Marathon on Twitch is still going.
- But if you miss the marathon, there are plenty of episodes available on Amazon Prime.
Update: Phillips updated the chart to include sweater colors all the way back to 1969. (via laura olin)