The oliebollen sweater that Micha Wertheim wore during the New Year’s Eve conference will become a museum piece. The garment can be seen for free in the Textile Museum in Tilburg. Emma van het Herk (26), a graduate of the Rietveld Academy, knitted it.
You made the sweater with oliebollen on it?
“Beats! I have been approached by Casper Braat. He did TV directing and art direction for the Micha Wertheim before twelve-show. It was his idea to dress Micha in a sweater with oliebollen on it. Casper and I then started looking at patterns and colors together. Ultimately, I developed his design with my experience and skills in knitting.”
Did you knit it by hand?
“No, with a hand knitting machine. It works by pushing the slide along a bed of needles. These machines came onto the market from the 1950s and were intended for housewives. They are no longer produced, but are still used by designers. Knitting with such a machine is a little faster than with pure hand, but certainly not as fast as with an industrial machine.”
It certainly took a while to make?
“Longer than people think, yes. This sweater takes a month of work. Sometimes I worked ten or twelve hour days.”
Did you expect the sweater to be a hit?
“Yes and no. I didn’t really think about it beforehand. But I thought: this has never been done before. The ugly christmas sweater is really a thing, but such a kind of sweater for New Year’s Eve has never been made before. It remains with one copy. The making was labor intensive and the techniques used cannot be reproduced on an industrial scale. It really is a work of art.”
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