Back in the ’80s, Bill Cosby was America’s Dad. He was the kind of guy who served his kids chocolate cake for breakfast (“Eggs! Milk! Wheat! That’s nutrition!”), he had killer dance moves, and — perhaps most importantly — he wore very ugly sweaters. As VICE explains in this video, you can thank Dutch fashion designer Koos van den Akker for creating the signature look — a cache of sweaters so hideous that they’re the subject of an entire Tumblr. “The ones that I made for Bill Cosby and the ones that I made in that period were all one-of-a-kind sweaters,” van den Akker explains. “In those days, in the early ’80s, it was very much of patterns — you have to realize when you look at this now, it’s familiar because all the fashion today is like that. When I did this, there was nothing like that around. So people were just freaked out. They said ‘What the fuck is that?'” Venture into his workroom in the clip after the jump; if you’re pressed for time, the Cosby-related stuff begins at around the 2 minute mark.
[via The High Definite]