Vitals

Danny Lloyd as Danny “Doc” Torrance, young boy with supernatural senses

Silver Creek, Colorado, Winter 1979

Film: The Shining
Release Date: May 23, 1980
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Costume Designer: Milena Canonero

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Aside from the occasional student style, most of my BAMF Style posts over the 14 years of this blog’s existence have centered on adult characters. Whether it’s the onset of spooky season or the fact that my own son turns one this month, it finally feels like the right time to make sure I don’t, uh, overlook one of the sickest fits in horror cinema: the Apollo 11 sweater worn by young Danny Torrance as he pedals through the hallways of the haunted Colorado hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining.

The role marked the first of only two major screen appearances for Danny Lloyd, who celebrates his 54th birthday today. Born October 13, 1972, Lloyd was just six years old when he was cast as the psychically gifted child navigating an increasingly terrifying winter at the isolated Overlook Hotel with his parents, Jack (Jack Nicholson) and Wendy (Shelley Duvall).

Despite Kubrick’s reputation as an exacting and often demanding director, he was notably protective of Lloyd, who was led to believe that he was appearing in a drama rather than a horror film. Because of his age, Lloyd did not see The Shining until several years after filming had wrapped. By then, he had already stepped away from acting after just one additional screen role: portraying a young G. Gordon Liddy in the 1982 television film Will: G. Gordon Liddy. He would not appear on screen again until a brief cameo in Doctor Sleep (2019), the sequel to The Shining, in which Ewan McGregor plays the adult Danny Torrance.

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What’d He Wear?

From the chambray shirt and sporty bomber he wears for the Torrance family’s arrival to his collection of colorful sweaters, Danny Torrance may be one of the best-dressed kids in cinema history. One snowy Wednesday at the Overlook, an errant ball distracts Danny from playing with his toys just enough to lure him into the dangerous Room 237. When he next emerges, silent and visibly bruised, Wendy initially assumes that Jack has abused him again before Danny eventually tells her about “a crazy woman” in the Room 237 bathtub.

His ordeal also leaves his clothes disheveled, most noticeably the brown-and-tan tartan plaid cotton flannel shirt worn beneath his Apollo sweater. Its oversized point collar is already substantial to match 1970s standards, but the damage makes it look even more exaggerated: one side has been pulled loose and torn backward, leaving the collar splayed awkwardly over the sweater’s neckline.

Legions of Kubrick fans have dedicated theories of varying sincerity and viability to the connection between Danny’s Apollo sweater and the overall meaning of The Shining, with some going as far as to suggest that this was the director lampshading his own rumored role in faking the 1969 lunar landing. However, the innocuous truth is simply that costume designer Milena Canonero encountered a worn space-themed sweater in a secondhand store while shopping with Danny Lloyd and his family for inspiration for the character’s wardrobe. Based on Lister & Co.‘s “Space Age” knitting pattern published in early 1970, Canonero had a new version crafted specifically for Danny to wear on screen. This was shared in the exhaustively researched 2,200-page book Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining by film historian J.W. Rinzler and director Lee Unkrich, the latter currently in possession of the screen-worn sweater.

Ambitious knitters could certainly try their own hand at the Lister pattern, but fans of all ages can also find their own Doc-inspired knitwear from artisans like Daly Mountain and Studio Kelsey.

Danny’s sweater is knitted from thick sky-blue wool, with blunt golden-tan stars scattered over the sleeves and chest around a crude white rocket worked into the front in intarsia. The rocket bears “APOLLO 11 | USA” in irregular black lettering, its deliberately childlike execution resembling a youngster’s drawing and making the sweater appear especially juvenile—an effect that reinforces Danny’s youthful innocence as he encounters the horrors of the Overlook Hotel. The rest of the sweater follows a conventional design, with a broadly ribbed crew neck, snug ribbed waist hem, and ribbed cuffs finishing each raglan sleeve.

Under the sweater’s hem, Danny tucks the plaid shirt into his olive trousers, made from a pinwale corduroy (also known as “needlecord”) that complements the warm, coarse textures of his shirt and sweater. These flat-front trousers have fatigue-style front patch pockets with slanted entries, two back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms. He holds them up with a deep tan leather belt.

Danny’s blue-and-white yellow sneakers and bright yellow socks echo the colors in his sweater. At one point housed among the Stanley Kubrick Archive at the University of the Arts London (UAL) per a 2016 Facebook post, these Keds-style sneakers each have hybrid uppers with a napped navy T-toe and three-eyelet lace panels overlaid against a lighter blue canvas body, detailed with Winnie the Pooh and Tigger embroidered along the outer and inner sides, respectively. The leather collar and rubber outsoles are a contrasting white.

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How to Get the Look

“The sweater that launched a conspiracy theory,” one Redditor described of the playful Apollo 11 sweater that costume designer Milena Canonero dressed Danny Torrance in for this brief but pivotal scene in the middle of The Shining. While graphic T-shirts are found in many men’s closets, young Doc makes the case for upping your cozy fall wardrobe with a graphic sweater.

• Brown-and-tan tartan plaid cotton flannel long-sleeved button-up shirt
• Sky-blue hand-knitted wool “Apollo 11”-motif crew-neck, raglan-sleeved sweater
• Olive pinwale corduroy flat-front trousers with belt loops, fatigue-style front patch pockets, back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Tan leather belt
• Blue canvas T-toe three-eyelet sneakers with Winnie the Pooh/Tigger embroidery and white rubber outsoles
• Yellow socks

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and read Stephen King’s novel.