In keeping with Fallon himself, the custom began when a workforce member wore an unpleasant Christmas sweater to a celebration. “We have been simply doing it as a result of it was a form of [a] enjoyable development,” he tells Vogue. “We have been like, ‘This can be a fairly enjoyable factor to simply play with the viewers and provides it out to somebody as an enormous prize, but it surely’s simply actually an unpleasant sweater.’” The idea reworked right into a full-blown custom—and signature programming—on the present.

The mind behind the sweater building is the present’s costume designer Mario Martines. He and the costume division start planning the sweaters virtually 10 months prematurely and work on the items in between making costumes for the present. Inspiration might strike at any second, whether or not Martines is watching an previous movie or taking a look at a chunk of cloth. “I attempt to maintain my thoughts as open as doable in the beginning till I actually lock in what I would like them to appear like,” says Martines. As soon as Martines has an thought, his workforce trawls cloth retailers, pet shops, and secondhand retailers to seek out supplies.  

Building is complicated, since these aren’t your normal sweaters. Martines makes use of the instance of the Victorian Portraits sweater, for which he mixed a inexperienced cardigan with leg-of-mutton sleeves fused and a purple sweater. In some instances, they’ve embedded lights which are operated with a battery pack covertly hidden within a pocket. The Oh! Tanenbaum sweater—a wearable model of a Christmas tree—has garlands of lights sewn into it. “They are surely a chunk of artwork,” Martines says.