Minnesota Company Maybe Didn't Make the 'Steve Jobs Sweater' After All
After Steve Jobs died, Bernhard Brenner—the founder of the Minneapolis-based clothing company Knitcraft—reportedly told the press that Knitcraft had manufactured the black St. Croix turtleneck sweaters beloved by the fashion iCon. Brenner claimed that Jobs sometimes called him up just to rave about his sweaters. Sales of St. Croix's $175 "Steve Jobs sweater" subsequently skyrocketed. But was it all BS?
"We have never been in touch with Jobs," Mary Bergin, a Knitcraft vice president, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune late last week. "We, like everyone, have seen on the Internet for years that he wore our product. But we don't know who said it." The company now says that Brenner was misquoted.
Last week, however, a spokesman for the St. Croix line reportedly told the Smoking Gun that "Jobs was a prized customer." TSG reported:
In an interview today, he told TSG that the company had previously "been in contact a little bit with [Jobs's] office." Asked how he knew that the Jobs turtleneck was a St. Croix product, [the spokesman] assured a reporter that company officials had "studied the garment closely" and that Jobs's devotion to St. Croix had "been confirmed by various sources."
After TSG reported on its conversation with the St. Croix spokesman, the company removed language from its website stating that Jobs had been "a fan" of their products. Whoops, sorry everybody—wrong Steve! They were actually referring to fashion icon Steve Guttenberg.
Walter Isaacon's forthcoming biography suggests that Jobs got all his sweaters from Issey Miyake. So if you want to be just like Steve Jobs, you should get your sweaters from Issey Miyake. (Note: You're never going to be like Steve Jobs, so why not give up the quest now and save yourself $175.)
