It’s been a little over 20 years since The Cosby Show has come it’s close, but the fondest memory from the show is still alive and well in 2012… “The Cosby Sweater” is something everyone’s familiar with, whether you watched the show or not. It’s also quite funny to see how trends of the 80’s and 90’s come full circle to this very day, and companies or businesses work almost the exact way thinks work now.
Enter, Koos van den Akker.
“When I did this [then], there was nothing like that around. So people were just freaked out like, “What the f**k is that?!””
Dutch designer/seamster, Koos van den Akker, came to the U.S. in 1968 for the same reason everyone around that time did, success in America. But I don’t think even he knew the kind of success he would end up seeing. Koos stepped in the design game upon arrival in America and started designing the artful sweaters for Bill Cosby and forever changed the game, as mail started to come in bulk with questions of where they could get a sweater like that. Little do they know, they were ALL one-of-a-kind. Watch above as VICE takes us “behind the seams” as we hear about Akker’s history, inspiration, the legacy of “the sweater”, and the process that went into each and every sweater.