Did ‘Bridget Jones’ start the
Ugly Christmas Sweater craze?

Bryan Alexander | USA TODAY – December 23, 2016

Here’s the story behind Darcy’s jumper.

Anthropologists could point to Colin Firth donning that terrible holiday jumper as stuffy lawyer Mark Darcy in 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary as the beginning of the Ugly Christmas Sweater craze consuming the nation.

The tacky woolen apparel is all over the big screen this season, in Office Christmas Party, Almost Christmas and the upcoming Why Him? 

But that goofy reindeer on the mopey Darcy remains the trend setter.

The sweater makes a return, via flashback, in this year’s Bridget Jones’ Baby, the third film in the saga with Renée Zellweger as the title heroine.

Sharon Maguire, director of all three films in the franchise, says there were tremendous discussions going into the original, cosmically-bad sweater choice for the key moment when Bridget meets Darcy at a party.

“The original sweater went through many designs because it had to be just right. The character of Mr. Darcy is a constipated English prig when we first meet him so we needed something totally ridiculous to pierce that pomposity. And for some reason neither Santas nor X-mas trees nor snowmen worked as well as that red-nosed moose or reindeer we chose. It also had to look home-knit, something his mother knitted for him.”

Even the moose or reindeer or whatever was a topic of serious, well maybe semi-serious, discussion.

“First versions of the moose were too small and too subtle. The moose eyes weren’t dopey enough. The horns weren’t large or waggly enough either. It also had to work for the camera. It’s a reveal, so the top of sweater had to be plain and make Darcy look kinda cool on Bridget’s first appearance. Although it’s impossible to look cool in a turtleneck sweater when you’re over 17 and not a model.”

Thanks for that image Sharon, and Colin and Mark Darcy, look what you started in film with Christmas sweaters everywhere! Naturally, it had to be brought back in the third movie ”because it’s a reminder to Darcy that Bridget equals ‘home.’ They’ve known each other since ‘she ran around his paddling pool naked’ as kids,” says Maguire. “It was also a reminder of the message of the third movie that you can’t rationalize love. People don’t necessarily match up on paper, love is crazy, stupid and irrational, but love legislates for itself,” says Maguire.

Nor can you ever truly rationalize one of those sweaters.