apologies for the slew of notifications but my friend and i are going as mary and murray for halloween so your account is literally a godsend rn. also. so impressed by the detail you put into this. great job!!!
omg that is such an awesome halloween costume idea!!!!! i hope they turn out great! and thank you, i'm so happy this little project of mine can be put to good use
Well, here it is, my analysis of Murray's entire wardrobe. Across the 168 episodes he wore 475 outfits, for an average of 2.83 outfits per episode. We can use this to infer that an average episode of Mary Tyler Moore takes place over about a 3 day period, though cataloguing Mary's outfits would probably give better data to back up this inference as Murray is absent in quite a few scenes.
Under the cut is 5 categories of graphs that breakdown Murray's wardrobe for the entire show, seeing which items were worn the most, as well as some trends of his clothing choices through the seasons. There are quite a few graphs, so beware of the length of this post beyond the read more.
Outerwear
Like my season wrap-ups, we'll start with a simple count of the different outerwear types Murray wore. We saw a decrease of cardigan as the series went on, but looking at the data as a whole, cardigans have remained the champion of Murray's wardrobe, with 148 cardigans worn. In a not-so-close second is jackets, ringing in at 111. Notably, Murray wore 41 outfits that did not have a second layer.
This graph shows the trend of Murray's outerwear choices from season to season. For the first 3 seasons, cardigans dominated to an extreme, but this dominance disappears suddenly at the onset of season 4, decreasing by 20 outfits from season 3 to 4, never regaining the stronghold it once had.
The steady upward trend we observes from season to season of jackets is shown nicely on this graph, rising from insignificance into a top contender in the later seasons. Interestingly, this graph also shows the increasing variation of Murray's outerwear choices. Cardigan's overwhelming domination is not picked up by a different type of outerwear even as the numbers of cardigans decreased. A more even distribution between the outerwear types becomes favored.
Lastly, we'll look at a breakdown of Murray's outerwear options, looking at the prevalence of each option throughout the series. The data for the graph is filtered to exclude any outerwear options only worn once.
The clear winner of this graph is the yellow cardigan, worn 34 times, with the entire cardigan family holding strong on repetitions, with the black double breasted cardigan and cornflower blue cardigan each appearing 26 times. The more worn non-cardigan is Murray's casual blue jacket, coming in at a mere 22. Putting this into perspective, however, with 475 total outfits, the yellow cardigan is only a part of 7% of them. Not a single outerwear option is worn more than 10% of the time, which goes to show the depth of his closet and the constant introduction of new outerwear options. In the end, I believe this makes it a very realistic wardrobe, having a handful of outfit staples, while changing it up enough to not be cartoon character-esque. A balance between the two extremes of never repeating an outfit or wearing the same thing every episode.
Shirts
A simple breakdown of the different shirt types Murray wore throughout the show. The category Button Up includes all of Murray's plaid shirts, differing from the Dress Shirt category. The Shirt category is comprised mainly of turtlenecks, as well as everything that didn't have buttons. The N/A category (with two points) is not that Murray did not wear a shirt, but that we could not see the shirt we was wearing under his outerwear.
It's obvious that dress shirts would appear the most, making up 307 of Murray's outfits. Shirts bring home a respectable 64 outfits, with button up making 98 different appearances. Sweaters were seen a meager 4 times, but sweaters were used more as a second layer which alleviates some of the sadness that could arise from thinking Murray only wore 4 sweaters during the show. Combining the sweater-as-outerwear data, Murray wore sweaters 88 times through the show!
It's hard to easily depict the variation of Murray's shirts, which goes to show how many different shirt options he had. This graph excludes everything not worn at least 3 times, yet it was still difficult to fit everything in one graph. That said, the data it reveals is interesting to compare between shirt types.
Both the button up and shirt categories have a shirt option appearing 16 times, respectively the yellow and black paid and the navy turtleneck. This is ten less than the more prominent dress shirt, however, with the lined navy dress shirt appearing 26 times. A few other favorite dress shirts also are seen more than 20 times, such as the light blue , plain blue, and red and white checkered dress shirt. But once again the greatest takeaway from this graph is that Murray had many options at his disposal, not simply wearing the same boring dress shirt episode after episode. He wears a gallery of patterns, from plaid and checkered to paisleys and pokadots. A rainbow of turtlenecks also appeared, though some sadly only worn once and not depicted on this graph, but is grounds this show solidly in the 70s with their prominent and casual appearances, along with the wide collars and all of Mary's outfits of course.
Pants
Moving on to something I have been gathering data on but not analyzing until now: Pants!
This is a distribution of the pants Murray wears throughout the show, categorized by their color. The N/A category means he did not get up from his desk during that scene so we do not know what color pants he was wearing. Out of the 475 outfits worn, Murray remained seated 21.68% of the time, which speaks of the blocking conducted on the show.
I've included the data chart with this graph, depicting the trend of pants as the seasons went on. Keeping Murray seated during scenes decreased in the last two seasons, with only 4 N/A results in season 7, echoing season 1 surprisingly. We can also see the ebb and flow of some of the pants options, with the light grey pants disappearing after season 2, and the brown pants appearing strong in season 4. No pants were worn every season except the grey pants, which grew in popularity as the series went along, peaking in season 5 with 23 appearances. This is a very interesting graph for me, since as I was collecting the data I had no idea the trend of his pants, or how some suddenly disappeared and never returned.
Ties
Another category of data I have been collecting has been if Murray was wearing a tie in each of his outfits. 89% of the time, Murray did not wear a tie, leaving only 54 outfits having a tie.
Per season, this breaks down interestingly, with no ties worn during all of season 2, while season 7 had the highest at 14. I think having Murray not wear a tie in his regular office outfits is a great choice, something that was clearly decided on as Murray did not appear without a tie until the 4th episode of the show. It's a nice and subtle aspect to his character, coupled with the cardigans he wore to build a welcoming and comfortable energy.
This pie chart shows the distribution of the 54 ties worn during the show. A brief description of each tie is given, along with the number of times the tie was worn. At 9 times, the plain black tie was worn the most, with the bowtie and red tie close behind, each at 6. However, most are only worn a few times, which allows a wide variety of ties worn over the mere 54 appearances.
3rd Layer
Last is a graph that shows the 3rd layers Murray wore, either under a shirt or as another outerwear layer. These were all seen as a proper component of a different outfit besides the green corduroy coat, which appeared occasionally from season one to season five. In total, Murray wore an outfit with a 3rd layer 26 times.
And that wraps up the series wrap-up. I want to extend my thanks to everyone who enjoyed this project, or even browsed through this blog. If you've made it to the bottom of this long post, I want to thank you for sticking around. I have enjoyed the project, so much so that I'm (very slowly) working on a website to display Murray's wardrobe. You can find it here: https://murrays-wardrobe.neocities.org/ When I've made significant progress on the website, I will probably post an update to this blog.
Over a year ago, I set out to categorize every single outfit Murray wore and I've finally completed it. It was well worth the journey and resulted in some unexpected results while further solidifying my love of 70's fashion and the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Thank you for coming on this ride with me and don't forget to rock that cardigan, just as Murray did 148 times!
And that's the last season! All 168 episodes cataloged and accounted for! Though this is not the end of the line for me. I'm going to be tweaking my data for accuracy and will be analyzing Murray's wardrobe for the entire series. That will be done shortly, but the real star of this post is season 7.
This season, we saw the introduction of some very fun patterned shirts, some of which reappeared throughout the season! Some of these were a gorgeous weaved lines design shirt and a shirt with a very fun diagonal line design which I was honestly shocked to see more than once. This season saw an admirable 73 outfits over the 24 episodes, including the final outfit he ever wears, a wonderful dark paisley shirt and reliable grey blazer.
Below are 3 graphs looking closer at what Murray wore in these last handful of episodes
As always, we start with a simple count of the different outerwear types Murray wore. On trend with what we've been seeing the past few seasons, jackets won in this category. The prominence of blazers have been growing with each season and have finally overtaken the number of sweaters seen. Cardigans ring in a meager 7, which is still better than the 3 he wore in all of season 5.
Breaking down his outerwear, Murray's dark brown jacket champion the episodes, appear ten times, while his dark denim jacket and brown v-neck sweater each appear 9 times. The worn and true red diamonds sweater, with us since season 4, still hold its place, appearing 4 times this season. A cream cardigan appears 5 times, an mere echo of how cardigans used to dominate his wardrobe, but a worth contender nonetheless.
Once again we are skipping the outwear-to-shirt breakdown of specific outfit repetitions, since similar to season 5, Murray wore the majority of his outfit combinations only once, with a smattering of outfits appearing twice and two outfits appearing 3 times. Instead, we'll go right into looking at a breakdown of the shirts Murray wore. The prevalence of his yellow turtleneck is heartwarming, yet tells the sad tale of the lessening of turtleneck variations. We enjoyed plenty of dress shirts and button ups, however, with the reemergence of the plain blue dress shirt's popularity, and a late series favorite in the orange plaid button up. All around an interesting distribution of shirt options!
As mentioned above, I will be analyzing Murray's wardrobe at a show level after I do some minor adjustments and corrections of my data. This means that these season wrap ups might not add up to the data presented in the show wrap up. Stay tuned!
