The Most High Fashion, Ugly Christmas Sweaters Are Courtesy of Jimmy Fallon

In keeping with Fallon himself, the custom began when a crew member wore an unsightly Christmas sweater to a celebration. “We had been simply doing it as a result of it was a sort of enjoyable development,” he tells Vogue. “We had been like, ‘This can be a fairly enjoyable factor to only play with the viewers and provides it out to somebody as a giant prize, however it’s simply actually an unsightly sweater.’” The idea reworked right into a full-blown custom–and signature programming–on the present.

The mind behind the sweater development is the present’s costume designer Mario Martines. He and the costume division start planning the sweaters virtually 10 months prematurely, and work on the items in between making costumes for the present. Inspiration could strike at any second, whether or not Martines is watching an previous movie or taking a look at a bit of cloth. “I attempt to maintain my thoughts as open as attainable in the beginning till I actually lock in what I need them to seem like,” says Martines. As soon as Martines has an concept, his crew trawls cloth retailers, pet shops, and secondhand retailers to seek out supplies.  

Building is advanced, since these aren’t your commonplace sweaters. Martines makes use of the instance of the “Victorian Portraits” sweater, for which he mixed a inexperienced cardigan with leg-of-mutton sleeves fused and a pink sweater. In some instances, they’ve embedded lights which can be operated with a battery pack covertly hidden within a pocket. The “Oh! Tanenbaum” sweater—a wearable model of a Christmas tree—has garlands of lights sewn into it. “They are surely a bit of artwork,” says Martines.