Is This the Best J.Crew Sweater Ever Made?

Why a striped sweater from the '90s has inspired a cult following.

In early December, Chad Senzel, who owns an eponymous vintage store on the Lower East Side, shared an Instagram photo of a colorful J.Crew sweater. “The best piece of clothing J.Crew has ever made in the history of the brand,” he wrote in the caption. “No hyperbole, no exaggeration.”

Originally designed for the Fall 1996 collection, the sweater is a shetland knit with a patchwork of various stripes. He was selling three of them: a medium, a large, and an extra-large.

Somsack Sikhounmuong, the creative director of Alex Mill and author of “Somstack” on Substack, was scrolling through Instagram a few days later when he saw Chad’s post. “I’d never seen one of those sweaters in 20 years of searching, and then all of a sudden, I see three,” he said.

Before Alex Mill, Somsack worked at J.Crew (and Madewell) for 16 years, starting in 2001. He’d encountered the sweater in vintage catalogs and photos, and it left a strong impression.

“Holiday sweaters have always been a big thing at J.Crew, but this one felt different,” he explained. “It’s a little wacky and wild, unlike some of the other stuff they did back then, like a big fisherman cable or a rollneck with a snowflake.”

The sweater on the cover of the Fall 1996 J.Crew catalog.

Priced at $128.

Three hours after Chad originally posted the sweaters, they were gone. Somsack, who is a serious vintage collector himself, was out of luck. (Buyers came in person to the store; Chad does not sell on Instagram.)

But about two months later, in late January, Somsack was scrolling through Instagram in the back of an Uber when he saw Chad post the sweater again. “I was like, Wait, is this the old post or a new post? And it was a new post,” he recalled. Chad had even more in stock. So Somsack immediately switched his Uber destination and headed straight to the store on Eldridge. Follow that sweater! And floor it!

By the time Somsack got there, Chad had two left: an extra-small and an extra-large, which is the one Somsack wanted. “It felt like fate—that I happened to be scrolling at the right moment,” he said, still in disbelief.

Somsack wearing the sweater at the office.

Turns out, Chad has a history with the sweater—and J.Crew—as well. He worked as a visual merchandiser for the brand from 2014 to 2021. It was around this time that he started collecting vintage, particularly vintage J.Crew. “I recall seeing the sweater on a Japanese vintage store’s Instagram account around 2017,” he said. “I’d never seen it before, and was instantly enthralled by it. And I became bound and determined to find one.”

To date, he’s found eight, selling seven in his store, which opened permanently in the summer of 2025 after previously existing as a roving street rack, and keeping one for himself. “I just bought every single one that I could find over the last six or seven years,” he explained.

The first one he found on eBay wasn’t his size. “It took me a while to find a medium, which is the one that fits me.” He’s found others on sites like Poshmark and at vintage shows around the United States. Most recently, he got two from his vintage-dealer friends. Now seemed like the right time to sell them, since he’d just opened his store.

When I asked if he’d share his keyword search terms, he said: “It’s so obvious that it doesn’t feel appropriate to gatekeep it… But I also don’t think it’s necessary to say it.”

Clearly, it’s hard to find the sweater, but not impossible. It also seems to really hit a nerve. Chad agreed with Somsack that the design stands out from J.Crew’s usual offering, calling it “involved” and “imaginative.”

Even if you’re not a J.Crew head, “it’s unlike anything that’s current right now,” added Somsack, referring to the beige-ification of knitwear thanks to the “quiet luxury” trend. “It just feels like a jolt of humor. The minute I brought it back to the office, everyone was like, Whoa! What is that? Wow! It elicits an emotion that I like to inject into my closet once in a while.”

Somsack plans to wear his sweater, but it's also inspired him to “add that wow factor” to future Alex Mill collections.

The sweater seems to have inspired other designers as well. “When I put the first batch out, the first person who bought one was this girl that I know from the neighborhood who is a knitter,” said Chad. “She was like, ‘I think I have a Beams sweater that is a recreation of it.’ And so I looked into it, and it turns out that Beams did almost an exact reproduction.”

A similar sweater by Beams Plus.

Thanks to a reverse Google image search, I also found one by The Elder Statesman that looks similar, and another by Chamula for Drake’s that has a similar patchwork pattern and color scheme. The product details on the latter sweater make clear how difficult it is to produce such intricate knitwear.

And another by The Elder Statesman.

“I actually reached out to a sweater designer friend who used to work with me at J.Crew, and she said that for a while they tried to redo it, but couldn’t because of the make—each square is connected by hand,” said Somsack. “Back in ‘96, it was affordable, but then when they tried to recreate it, it was gonna cost like $600 or $700.”

At the end of the day, the easiest way to get your hands on this vintage J.Crew sweater might be to knit one yourself. In his research, Chad also discovered that the J.Crew design bears an uncanny resemblance to the work of Kaffe Fassett, an American-born, British-based artist who is something of a legend in the knitting community for his colorful patchwork patterns, designed in the 1980s….

Some of Kaffe Fassett’s patterns.

Who knew that a J.Crew sweater could connect so many different people at once?

As I was leaving the brand’s New York Fashion Week party last night, I happened to see another person wearing one. His name is also Chad (!), and he’s a model for Tanner Fletcher, one of the five emerging American brands J.Crew asked to “remix” its classic rollneck style. (I swear this post isn’t sponsored.)

Chad Johnson styling the sweater like a pro.

I ran up to him and asked him where he got it. “Chad Senzel,” he said.

It was the last one left.

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