Men's Nautica Fashion Brand

Nautica is a mid-range to high-end American apparel brand of the VF Corporation, featuring primarily men's, women's and children's apparel and accessories, as well as home, watches and fragrance. That opening sentence does the filing work for the whole profile: an American brand, priced from the middle to the top of the market, owned by VF Corporation, and broader than menswear alone - the men's clothing on this page sits inside a house that also dresses women and children and furnishes homes, wrists and fragrance counters.

Nautica was founded in 1983 by clothing designer David Chu and a partner. It was purchased for cash and stock in 1984 by State-O-Maine, a New York-based apparel company, and State-O-Maine changed its name to Nautica in 1994. VF Corporation purchased Nautica in 2003. The timeline is unusually tidy for a brand profile: a designer founding in 1983, a purchase a year later, the buyer taking the brand's own name a decade after that - a sign of which name carried the value - and the move into VF Corporation in 2003.

The Water, in the Brand's Own Words

Over the past few decades, Nautica has become one of the most important and most recognized American brands throughout the world. At Nautica they celebrate, love and respect the water, everywhere, everyday. Their nautical heritage and spirit is reflected in every aspect of their menswear brand categories, and their quality products are crafted with integrity and are enhanced with performance capabilities. That brand statement gives a buyer the two tests the house sets for itself: the nautical heritage should be visible in every menswear category, and the quality should be crafted with integrity and enhanced with performance.

Read against the men's range, the water theme is a design language before it is a slogan. Nautical heritage in menswear means the sailing wardrobe's working pieces - the polo shirt, the chino, the deck shoe, the windbreaker and the striped knit - cut for land but drawn from the boat. Performance capabilities are an enhancement layered onto that heritage, not a replacement for it: a Nautica garment that looks right at the marina and performs on the water is the brand working as described, and one that does neither falls short of it.

Reading This Nautica Record

Read as a buying guide, this is the N letter's nautical house. Judge the men's apparel first by the heritage test - does the piece belong to the sailing wardrobe's family of polos, chinos, knits and outerwear - and then by the construction test the brand states: quality crafted with integrity, enhanced with performance capabilities. The price position is part of the picture too: mid-range to high-end, so the comparison set is the better American sportswear labels, not the bargain rail.

Nautica, under N in the Men's Fashion Brands directory: an American apparel brand founded in 1983 by David Chu and a partner, bought by State-O-Maine in 1984, renamed into its buyer in 1994, and purchased by VF Corporation in 2003 - a house that celebrates, loves and respects the water, everywhere, everyday.

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