Men's Munsingwear Fashion Brand

The company was started by George D. Munsing, who came to Minnesota from New York in 1886 to set up a textile factory, along with Frank H. Page and Edward O. Tuttle. The company was established as Northwestern Knitting Company. It also was known as PremiumWear. Three founders, a journey from New York to Minnesota in 1886, a textile factory, and a company first known by a plain descriptive name - Northwestern Knitting Company - before it was known by its founder's. This profile treats the brand strictly as a product record - garments, construction and company history - as a buying guide for underwear should.

Munsing was a technologist and the company received several patents, including those for a crocheting machine in 1891 and a union suit in the early 1890s. The union suit was the company's flagship product until the 1920s, when central heating made it less useful. That is a complete product era in three lines: patented machinery, a patented one-piece undergarment as the flagship, and then a change in the customer's houses - central heating - that quietly retired the need for it. The cause is worth keeping, because it is the honest kind of reason products end.

"Don't Say Underwear, Say Munsingwear"

In the 1920's, the company behind the brand was the largest manufacturer of underwear in the world. Its slogan was "Don't say underwear, say Munsingwear". World leadership in a single staple category, stated plainly, and a slogan that tried to make the brand name the generic word for the garment - the ambition of every staple maker, achieved here, at world scale. In 1923 the company went public and changed its name to Munsingwear, Inc. - the founder's name promoted, mid-decade, to the company itself.

Munsingwear was a Minnesota-based brand of underwear from which Original Penguin developed. Munsingwear was purchased by Perry Ellis International, and the directory's Perry Ellis International profile and the Original Penguin page in the O letter, both linked from this page, carry that ownership and offspring research onward. The sequence to hold is: an underwear brand first, a famous offshoot second - Original Penguin developed from Munsingwear, not the other way round - and a purchase by Perry Ellis International as the ownership line, stated without a date.

In 1955, an ambitious salesman named Abbot Pederson traveled to NYC on a sales trip for the Munsingwear brand. With time to kill before a flight home, he decided to pop into a local bar for a few whiskeys. Taking a wrong turn down a Manhattan street, he oddly enough found himself outside a taxidermist's shop. Deciding he needed a drinking buddy for the flight, he bought a penguin and named him Pete. Pete was the original penguin. The story is told at full length - salesman, wrong turn, taxidermist and all - because it is the founding story of the Original Penguin mark, told on the Munsingwear page.

Reading This Munsingwear Record

Read as a buying guide, judge the underwear garments as products: fabric, waistband and seam construction, fit and care - the staple tests for a brand that was, in the 1920s, the largest manufacturer of underwear in the world, built on patented knitting machinery and a flagship union suit. The history around those products is unusually complete for this letter: 1886 and Minnesota, Northwestern Knitting Company, the 1891 crocheting-machine patent, public as Munsingwear, Inc. in 1923, purchase by Perry Ellis International, and Pete the penguin in 1955.

Munsingwear, under M in the Men's Fashion Brands directory: a Minnesota underwear brand from 1886 whose slogan told the world not to say underwear but to say Munsingwear, and the house from which Original Penguin developed.

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