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'You just can’t get everything you want': Bernie Sanders' mittens not for sale

Martin Belam
·4-min read
<span>Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Bernie Sanders’ mittens may have become the unexpected must-have fashion accessory of Joe Biden’s inauguration, but those hoping to steal the Vermont senator’s look are in for a disappointment. The teacher who made them and gave them to Sanders says she has none for sale.

The mittens that sparked hundreds of internet memes were made from repurposed sweaters and recycled plastic by Jen Ellis, a 42-year-old second grade teacher who lives in Essex Junction, Vermont, just outside of Burlington, where Sanders was mayor in the 1980s.

“I don’t have any mittens to sell. I don’t really do it a lot any more. I’m flattered that they want them, but there are lots of people on Etsy who sell them and hopefully people will get some business from them. But I’m not going to quit my day job,” Ellis told the Jewish Insider in an interview on Wednesday night.

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Related: Biden inauguration: 46th president to start first full day in office – live reaction

She explained that the demand had been overwhelming. “I am a second grade teacher, and I’m a mom, and all that keeps me really busy. There’s no possible way I could make 6,000 pairs of mittens, and every time I go into my email, another several hundred people have emailed me.”

She went on to say: “I hate to disappoint people, but the mittens, they’re one-of-a-kind and they’re unique and sometimes in this world, you just can’t get everything you want.”

“It’s been unexpected,” she said of their sudden social media fame. “He must really like them if he chose to wear them.”

Ellis said she was not a regular social media user, and had struggled to remember the login for her Twitter account.

Asked about his outfit, Sanders told CBS News in an interview after the ceremony: “In Vermont, we dress warm – we know something about the cold. We’re not so concerned about good fashion. We want to keep warm. And that’s what I did today.”

Sanders’ outfit rapidly became an internet meme. He was Photoshopped into historic photographs, comic panels and the subway, while sitting, arms folded, wrapped up warm against the DC winter weather, wearing that spectacular pair of mittens. Indeed, #BerniesMittens became one of the trending hashtags of the inauguration.

There was also political speculation about what might be fuelling the senator’s mood.

And this appears to be true.

Meme veterans also noted that Sanders was wearing the same practical and sturdy coat that had become internet-famous in a video where he had appealed for financial support at the end of 2019.

Since that post, the picture has appeared repeatedly on social media, with the caption replaced to say: “I am once again asking …” followed by a joking topical reference.

An earlier photo from the day, picturing Sanders carrying a folder of documents, also caused a stir on social media when director Rian Johnson responded to a fan who had superimposed the label “Knives Out 2 script” on to the folder. Johnson jokingly suggested he had given a draft script of the keenly anticipated potential sequel to 2019’s surprise hit movie Knives Out – but had heard nothing back yet.