Steal the look: Ryan Gosling’s curling sweater in Project Hail Mary | Canada Voices

Project Hail Mary is a science fiction-adventure movie that wears its heart on its sleeve – make that, its knitted sleeve.

In the adaptation of Andy Weir’s bestselling novel, Ryan Gosling plays Ryland Grace, a gifted but disgraced astrobiologist teaching Grade 8 science. He’s conscripted on a one-person mission to stop a mysterious substance from infecting the Earth’s sun, and, throughout the film, he rocks a retro zip cardigan. It’s a distinct homespun, hand-knit style fellow Canadians will instantly recognize as a 1950s-style curling sweater.

With its stylized animals, the design is also unmistakable as a vintage Mary Maxim pattern.

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Founded in Sifton, Man., more than 70 years ago, yarn and needlecraft brand Mary Maxim has been owned and operated by the same family for four generations. After originating the graph-style pattern for home knitters in the 1950s, the brand relocated to Paris, Ont., (where it still runs its Canadian operations and a large retail emporium), and later expanded to the United States.

“One of the things that makes us who we are is we still design exclusive patterns, and kit all the materials to make it,” president Mitch McPhedrain said from the company’s headquarters in Port Huron, Mich.

The heavy, woollen style is a nostalgic favourite, only occasionally glimpsed in the wild or in pop culture – the last time in recent memory being Angela Lansbury sleuthing around Cabot Cove in Murder, She Wrote. Even among Gosling’s 50 or so costume changes – including a show-stopping NASA extravehicular activity suit – the sweater stands out.

On a video call from London, where the film was shot, Project Hail Mary co-designers David Crossman and Glyn Dillon explained how the vintage cardigan went from bonspiel to Big Bang.

Dillon spotted it at a Sunday vintage market in London, on what happened to be the day of their first meeting with Gosling. After sending photos to Crossman, he scooped it up for £90. “It was one of those instant things that when [Gosling] saw it, it became a favourite,” Dillon said. “It felt like it should go all the way through, and that would be his signature thing.”

In the movie, each crew member has a small container of mementos, which include the street clothes from their lives on Earth. The cardigan is among the items Ryland wears on the spacecraft, in flashback scenes and – looking a little worse for wear – in the poignant final scene. It’s a change from the source material, in which Ryland wears a standard-issue blue jumpsuit throughout the mission.

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Shortly before going to camera, however, the Project Hail Mary team considered that the original sweater design of a wolf with a trail of bloody paw prints might be “a bit too aggressive for a primary teacher,” Crossman recalled. They changed the bloody prints to grey and the fur to brown, and they softened the wolf’s facial expression so that it more closely resembled a fox.

“Our poor knitter had to get them all done,” Crossman said of the five handmade replica sweaters needed for the shoot. The modified Project Hail Mary version of the Mary Maxim cardigan pattern is now available on the brand’s website.

Costume design is a form of storytelling, and, along with the character’s scuffed white Converse and graphic T-shirt collection, the knit offers clues to Ryland’s personality and values. “It’s a way of layering the story a little bit more so that there’s a bit more character to him,” Dillon said.

Light years from home on Project Hail Mary’s state-of-the-art spacecraft, the sweater is like a warm hug. And as the embodiment of ingenuity, creativity and care, the knit speaks to the film’s broader themes, such as the hero’s can-do, low-fi approach to problem-solving.

The thing about Canadian curling sweaters is: You can’t really buy them. They’re “forever sweaters,” Toronto mid-century vintage dealer Terri Lipman pointed out: “legacy heirloom pieces passed down from one generation to the next.”

Prized by connoisseurs, pristine vintage pieces can run up to $2,000 on eBay. Purists who value the sweater’s history, Lipman added, know that authentic Cowichan versions are the most sought-after for their Indigenous imagery and timeless beauty.

Those sweaters depict Indigenous icons such as the Thunderbird in natural wool and are hand-knit by the artisans of the Coast Salish peoples of Vancouver Island. (Both the sweater and knitters are culturally protected by the Government of Canada).

Featuring an intarsia knitting colourwork technique, the curling sweaters evolved from nature and landscape designs in the 1950s to depictions of hobbies such as fishing and sports rendered in bright, bulky, acrylic-blend yarns.

“It’s nostalgia that maybe you remember a family member in one,” Lipman said. “I think it really just hits the heart.”

Mary Maxim continues to mail out its yarn, crochet and craft catalogues each month, though the classic zip cardigan remains president McPhedrain’s personal favourite.

“It was awesome to see them bring that back,” he said of getting the call that Gosling would be wearing their design on screen. McPhedrain is hopeful that the sweaters will see a resurgence. “But if not, I just think it’s cool that our designs made it that far and [they] wanted to feature it in a movie.”

Like the film itself, you might call it a sentimental journey.

Vintage identification

Being “granny-knit,” as Lipman described them, means the sweaters seldom have garment tags. The most useful clue to dating them is the zipper. Earlier versions have a thick Lightning or Talon zipper. Moving into the 1960s, the metal zippers are smaller in size, and, from the later 1960s into the 1970s, the brand introduced a thick-tooth plastic zipper.

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For the impatient shopper, modern Canadian brands Outclass and Faiz T.S. offer new iterations.

“We wanted to lean more into Canadian heritage as our image and identity, to be more literal with it,” designer Matteo Sgaramella said of introducing a contemporary nod to the retro style ($460, outclass.ca).

The 15-year-old menswear label chose a classic goose motif as a gesture to the mail-order and kit sweaters of the 1960s. Outclass’s version is softer and less bulky with a Peruvian alpaca and merino blend.