Yasemin Esmek has fixed Adrienne Warren’s costumes in “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” dressed Rockettes for Radio City’s “Christmas Spectacular” and altered Glenda Jackson’s suit in “King Lear.” But with “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” the new Tom Hanks film about the beloved public-television host Fred Rogers, her handiwork practically has a starring role.
Esmek knitted all the sweaters Hanks sports in the film: re-creations of Mr. Rogers’ signature zip-up cardigans, which he wore for every episode of his show, including the bright red version housed at the Smithsonian.
“I’m a big fan of Tom Hanks,” the Maplewood, NJ, resident tells The Post. “And knitting for a movie, it just sounded like so much fun. I knew I had to do it.”
Esmek, in her 50s, was altering calico dresses and aprons for Broadway’s 2018 revival of “Carousel” when she heard from costume designer Arjun Bhasin, who was looking for an expert knitter to take on Hanks’ sweaters for the Rogers film.
“It was of the utmost importance that Fred Rogers’ sweaters be hand-knit and duplicated perfectly,” Bhasin tells The Post. The cardigans have become inseparable from the TV host’s persona, a symbol of his humility and down-to-earth sensibility. They had zippers instead of buttons — making them easier to take on and off — and were hand-knit by Rogers’ mother, who would give her son a new variation every Christmas. Rogers wore them until they were almost threadbare, and in later years, after his mother’s death, his crew finally found a suitable substitute for his mom’s originals, from the company that supplied the sweaters for the US Postal Service.
“They are so iconic and so special that I wanted to do the originals justice,” Bhasin says. “They had to be hand-knit to be slightly uneven, slightly imperfect, to be realistic.
Yasemin’s artistry is undeniable,” he adds. “I’m so happy to have been able to collaborate with her.”
Esmek grew up in Hanover, Germany, and learned how to knit in first grade.
She studied knitwear design at Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology — where she met her husband, a fashion production manager — and even had her own line of woolens that she sold at Barneys in the early 1990s.
Esmek took a break in the 2000s to raise her children — one’s now a biologist, the other is studying shoe design at FIT, and both knit — but began working in costume shops as a tailor. Six years ago, Esmek took a job altering fashions at the Metropolitan Opera, eventually landing gigs at the New York City Ballet as well as several Broadway shows.
She wasn’t very familiar with Mr. Rogers before she began knitting those cardigans. “My kids watched a little bit, but they’re almost a little too young for it,” she says. So she had to do a lot of research, studying photos and watching the 2018 documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”
“It made me cry,” she says. “He was such a good guy.”
Dissatisfied with the yarn she found back home in New Jersey, Esmek trekked to Webs, a gigantic yarn store in Northampton, Mass., to find the perfect thread for Hanks’ cardigans. “I just bought, bought, bought yarn and knitted up [swatches], and [the costume designers] chose what colors and designs they wanted.”
Most of the sweaters she made are from cotton yarn. “We tried acrylic, but they didn’t like the touch, and … with all the lights, [Hanks] would have sweat too much,” she says. The designers also asked her to make two of the cardigans on a machine, instead of with her hands, to show the difference between the sweaters Rogers had that were made by his mother and the ones he bought later.
And then there was the issue with Hanks’ fluctuating measurements.
“They gave me his size, but they also told me he would lose weight for the role, so it was a little tricky,” she says. “I made one sweater and it wasn’t fitting, so they pinned it … After that, I made a basic paper pattern and that’s what I used to make the cardigans,” with some adjustments.
Esmek made six sweaters in all: two in red and one each in mustard yellow, teal, purple and Kelly green. She made them during the summer of 2018, in about nine weeks, while sitting in her backyard or upstairs in her studio.
“It’s very relaxing,” says Esmek, who’s also made sweaters for Téa Leoni to wear on the latest season of “Madam Secretary” and for Ed Norton in “Motherless Brooklyn.” And while she’s yet to meet Hanks, she thinks the actor approved of her knitting.
“He sent me some pictures with his autograph,” she says. “So I assume he liked the sweaters too.”