Very few pieces of clothing get named after a character. Fewer still keep that name for fifty years. But type “Starsky cardigan” into a search bar today and everyone knows exactly what you mean: heavy wool, wide shawl collar, a bold geometric pattern across the chest, worn open over a shirt.
The show, briefly
Starsky & Hutch ran on ABC from 1975 to 1979. Two detectives, a red Ford Gran Torino with a white stripe, and streets that always seemed to be wet. David Starsky, played by Paul Michael Glaser, was the scruffier of the two — and where his partner wore leather, Starsky wore knitwear.
The cardigan was not a costume in the usual sense. It looked like something a person actually owned. The story that has followed it ever since is that Glaser brought his own sweater to set because he thought it suited the character better than what wardrobe had picked. Whether or not that is exactly how it happened, it explains the effect: on screen it reads as clothing, not costume, and that is precisely why it lasted.
Why this particular sweater stuck
The Starsky cardigan is a Cowichan-style knit — the same family of chunky, shawl-collared, motif-front sweaters that later gave us The Dude's cardigan in The Big Lebowski.
What makes it work on camera is contrast. The collar is enormous, so it frames the face. The pattern sits across the chest at exactly the height a camera finds in a mid-shot. And the fabric is thick enough to hold its shape when the actor moves, which soft knitwear does not do. A director gets a silhouette that is readable from across a street.
It also happens to be genuinely flattering. The wide collar broadens the shoulders, the open front creates a vertical line, and the weight of the wool means it hangs instead of clinging.
How to wear it now
The mistake people make is treating it as a costume piece. It is not. Worn with a plain t-shirt or a simple shirt and straight jeans, it reads as a good heavy cardigan and nothing more — the reference is there for people who catch it, and invisible to everyone else.
Three practical notes:
- Wear it open. These cardigans are cut to hang, and the collar only does its job when it can fold back.
- Keep the rest simple. The sweater is the loudest thing you are wearing. Let it be.
- Do not size up too far. Chunky wool already adds bulk. If you are between sizes, the smaller one usually looks better.
Choosing a colour
The screen version was a warm brown-and-cream combination, and that remains the closest thing to “the” Starsky cardigan. But the pattern carries well in other palettes, and we knit it in several: the classic, plus green, blue, and grey.
If you want the reference to be unmistakable, take the classic. If you want a cardigan you will reach for every week without thinking about a 1970s detective, the grey and the green are the quieter choices.
What you are actually buying
Ours are knitted by hand by women in our village in Türkiye — one knitter per garment, start to finish, roughly 40 to 50 hours of work. Because they are hand-knit rather than machine-made, no two are perfectly identical, and the pattern will sit a millimetre or two differently on each one. That is not a defect. It is the difference between a garment somebody made and a garment a factory produced.
Our Starsky cardigans — and the Fox Cardigan — are knitted ahead of time and ready to ship, dispatching within 2–7 days. Only custom measurements are knitted from scratch, and those take four to six weeks.
Read the full story of this piece, or see how to care for heavy wool so it outlives the trend cycle it came from.
Our pieces are hand-knit tributes inspired by these characters. They are not official merchandise and are not affiliated with or endorsed by any studio, production or rights holder.