These vintage sweaters were real quality, with heavy wool and deep colors to treasure for years.

And isn’t Steven Tatar the heir apparent to the American Greetings fortune?

Yep. From papermag.com:

Your great-grandfather started American Greetings selling postcards out of a shoebox in Union Terminal on Cleveland’s Public Square and your grandfather built it into a multi-billion dollar business. Is there a secret family recipe for building brands?

Steven Tatar: Absolutely. I learned from working in my family’s business to know who you truly are, where you come from and to stay real to your roots. That’s where a brand’s soul lives and it can’t be created artificially.

PS: What happens when you run out of original stock?

ST: Well, that’s not going to happen too soon, but it will happen eventually. We’re interested in creating new designs that reflect the quality and quirky colors and patterns of the archived pieces — we have swatch samples back to the 1930s!

PS: How do you plan to maintain the tradition of American craftsmanship? Will you be able to produce new product in America?

ST: That’s a very challenging and confronting question for us. It’s well understood that manufacturing in America is rapidly disappearing. Many of the few remaining machines that our goods were made with have been destroyed. We’re looking high and low for producers to collaborate with in order to make new goods, and if they’re in the U.S., then all the better.

By the way, Engineered Garments for FW08 had commissioned work from Centralia Knitting Mills (http://www.centraliaknittingmills.com) in Washington state to make a knit cardigan in what appears to be a similar gauge as the blue one above. Here’s a link to a Japanese site that has pics of the cardigan: http://www.nalu.co.jp/collection/eg/multipocket-knitcardigan.html