How Harry Styles’s Viral 'Today' Show Cardigan Inspired a New Collaboration With JW Anderson

In the early, not-yet-calamitous days of February 2020, the musician Harry Styles appeared on the Today show to sing hits “Watermelon Sugar” and “Adore You” from his then-recent sophomore album Fine Line, which had debuted some months earlier. While warming up for the show’s live performance, Styles wore a couple menswear trends du jour from that time, including a pearl necklace and a thick-knit, Crayola-hued cardigan from British designer Jonathan Anderson’s namesake label JW Anderson. The eye-catching sweater became a huge hit on a then-rising app called TikTok, where enterprising users—perhaps yet unaware that the universe was about to curse them with an overabundance of free time—were knitting their own versions of Styles’s kooky knitwear.

The cardigan frenzy produced a pandemic-era NFT and an exhibition at London’s V&A Museum. Two years later, Styles would return to the Today show to promote his next album, Harry’s House, wearing another Anderson-designed ensemble that far out-wackadoodled the rainbow knit. Now, the two Brits have partnered up for a capsule collection via Styles’s lifestyle brand Pleasing. The line includes metallic nail polishes, apparel with a running balloon motif, and accessories such as a phallus-shaped keychain, some of which serves “as a joyful tribute to the viral cardigan,” per a press release.

Courtesy of Pleasing / JW Anderson

Courtesy of Pleasing / JW Anderson

“JW Anderson is a brand we feel so aligned with in terms of point of view, creativity and energy—and has been a brand we’ve wanted to collaborate with for some time,” says Harry Lambert, Styles’s longtime stylist and Pleasing’s creative director. “As a stylist, I’ve had the joy and privilege of working with Jonathan over the years, and of course, so has our founder, Harry, who is a big supporter and wearer of Jonathan’s work.”

Courtesy of Pleasing / JW Anderson

Courtesy of Pleasing / JW Anderson

Indeed, Anderson is one of several designers in Styles’s growing Rolodex of fashion partners. (The singer’s ex-girlfriend, the actress Taylor Russell, also happens to be an ambassador for the Spanish luxury label Loewe, which Anderson also designs.) After sitting out the shows at London Fashion Week for nearly a decade, Styles recently returned to the front row to support two industry friends: the London designer Steven Stokey-Daley, who presented his label S.S. Daley, as well as his longtime pal and former Gucci designer Alessandro Michele, who made his Valentino debut.