Paternal. Sexless. Infinitely square. The cardigan sweater is generally considered the Mister Rogers of men’s wear, and for good reason: Fred Rogers made sure of it.

Over the course of 895 episodes and 33 years of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” Mister Rogers advertised his gentle, nonthreatening nature by slipping from a jacket and tie — symbols of the messy, scary adult professional world — into a humble knit zip-up that was homely both in the British definition (“Simple but cozy and comfortable, as in one’s own home”) and the American (I mean, yikes).

Mister Rogers’s many, colorful cardigans — one of which is now in the Smithsonian — were originally knitted by Mr. Rogers’s mother, Nancy McFeely Rogers. According to a recent article on Smithsonian.com, she made a new one for her famous son every Christmas (a McTouchy McFeely detail if there ever was one).

After she died in 1981, the show’s art director looked to that bastion of saucy style, the United States Postal Service, for inspiration, relying on hand-dyed versions of mail-carrier cardigans.