The most famous sample of double knitting is the pair of socks knitted simultaneously on one set of knitting needles by Anna Makarovna, the nanny in Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace
When the pair was finished, she made a solemn ceremony of pulling one stocking out of the other in the presence of the children.
Double knit fabric became popular within 1970s fashion; in the 1988 Grammy Award–winning song "Parents Just Don't Understand", Will Smith comically excoriates his mother for forcing him to wear outdated, 1970s-era "double-knit reversible slacks". However, the double-knit fabric referred to is a machine-made double-thick construction with some similarities to handmade double knitting (durability, reversibility) but none of the unique colorwork and construction possibilities.