Bernie Sanders’ inaugural mittens — fashioned of repurposed wool and fleece spun from recycled plastic — have grabbed the attention of the press and public globally. Now the U.S. senator and the Vermont teacher who made them hope they’ll snag an equal amount of support for charities in the Green Mountain State.
“Are you having as much fun with this as the world is?” CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash asked Sanders on air during the weekend.
The senator, pictured in countless internet memes sporting the hot mittens and a cold scowl, grinned as he revealed how he’s reprinting the photo on a series of fundraising products.
“Not only are we having fun,” he said, “we’re going to be selling sweatshirts and T-shirts around the country and all of the money that’s going to be raised — which I expect will be a couple of million dollars — will be going to programs like Meals on Wheels.”
That revenue projection might sound overly optimistic, even coming from the incoming chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. But $45 sweatshirts for the meal delivery program and $27 T-shirts to help Feeding Chittenden, the Chill Foundation and Vermont community action centers are temporarily sold out, according to the website.
Sanders isn’t the only one surprised by the sudden popularity of what Women’s Wear Daily calls “the ultimate style statement of 2021.” Jen Ellis, the Essex Junction educator who made the senator’s mittens with a sewing machine her mother gave her at age 12, didn’t expect to be namechecked on television, radio and online news outlets.
“I’m so excited that he likes the mittens and he wants to wear them,” the second-grade Westford School teacher told National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” program. “I had no idea that this is what would happen.”
Ellis, whose only tie to Sanders is the fact her child went to the preschool his daughter-in-law directs, first thought about the Democratic presidential candidate when he lost the party’s nomination in 2016.
“I was really heartbroken for him,” she told The Washington Post. “I thought, ‘I’d like to make him a pair of mittens. … Is this crazy? I don’t even know this guy.’”
Ellis went on to tweet an offer to make mittens for others before setting aside her sewing machine and social media account. Then came this month’s inauguration and, within hours, 12,000 inquiries. That’s when she posted an update.
“I’m so flattered that Bernie wore them to the inauguration,” she wrote after the event. “Sadly, I have no more mittens for sale.”
But after finishing report cards last week, Ellis decided to make three more pairs for auction — one for her 5-year-old [daughter’s college fund], a second for the LGBTQ youth support agency [Outright Vermont] and a third for the Shelburne-based dog rescue [Passion 4 Paws].
“Bernie Sanders called me,” she has posted on Twitter, “to tell me that the mitten frenzy has already raised an enormous amount of money for Vermont charities. I am not authorized to disclose the amount yet but it’s BIG and it’s amazing!”
For all the resulting memes and media coverage — “Bernie Sanders in Mittens Will Replace Kim Cattrall in ‘Sex and the City’ Reboot, Stars Tease,” Britain’s Independent is reporting — photographer Brendan Smialowski of the global news agency Agence France-Presse confides he almost didn’t snap what Esquire magazine calls “the photo of the century.”
“My lens was originally on somebody else,” Smialowski told Esquire, “but out of my other eye I saw him fiddling with his hands and I just very quickly went back to him.”
Ellis, for her part, is receiving encouragement to focus on mittens full-time.
“I can see that if I wanted to drop everything and pursue that path, I could do it, but who knows how long that would last?” the schoolteacher told Slate.com. “The path that I’m already on brings me a tremendous amount of joy and I think that’s the greatest symbol of success, right?”
