Men's Fashion Brands V

Welcome to the V section of the Men's Fashion Brands directory. In this area of the fashion brand directory you will find men's fashion brands from leading apparel companies and fashion designers that begin with the letter "V" - five brand profiles, linked below: Van Heusen, Vans, Versace, Volcom and Von Dutch. V is the directory's most varied letter in miniature: a dress-shirt label, a skate shoe, a luxury house, a boardsports brand and a pinstriper's nickname, with almost nothing in common except the letter and a well-kept record.

The chronology of these brands runs from pushcart shirt sellers to a 2011 takeover offer. Moses Phillips and his wife Endel were sewing shirts by hand in 1881; John Manning Van Heusen's curved-cloth process came in 1910 and the Phillips-Van Heusen name in 1957. Gianni Versace founded his Italian luxury house in 1978. Kenny Howard, the Von Dutch namesake, died in 1992 - a year after Woolcott and Hall founded Volcom in 1991 - and Groupe Royer purchased the Von Dutch company in 2009, the same decade Kering launched its friendly offer for Volcom in May 2011.

If you know of an important men's clothing brand that begins with the letter "V" and is not listed in this section, please let us know. Five profiles cannot cover every V label in menswear, and a name-only gap in the directory is an open file that reader knowledge, sent through the directory's contact route, is how such files get completed.

The Five V Brands

Van Heusen comes first in the hub's order, and it is the letter's shirtmaking record: partly named for the inventor of a 1910 process that fused cloth on a curve, built from the D. Jones and Phillips shirt businesses that merged as Phillips-Jones in 1907, renamed Phillips-Van Heusen in 1957 when its shirt line gave the company its name, and PVH from 2011 - a brand filed here for dress shirts, pants and ties.

Vans and Volcom are the letter's two Costa Mesa boardsports brands, and they are distinct: Vans, an American manufacturer of skateboarding shoes owned by VF Corporation, also making t-shirts, hoodies, socks, hats and backpacks, and connecting youth culture with action sports, art, music and street culture for nearly 50 years; Volcom, founded in 1991 by Richard "Wooly" Woolcott and Tucker "T-Dawg" Hall on their own boardsports experience, known for its stone logo, its True to This slogan and the Let the Kids Ride Free campaign.

Versace and Von Dutch close the five from opposite ends of fashion. Versace is the luxury record: Gianni Versace S.p.A., founded in 1978, Medusa head logo, upmarket Italian-made main collection and the Versace Collection, Versus Versace and Versace Jeans diffusion lines. Von Dutch is the Kustom Kulture record: an apparel brand named for pinstriper Kenny Howard, his name sold by his daughters after his 1992 death, his flying eyeball still an icon of the '50s and '60s street rod crowd.

How to Use This V Hub

Start from the grid: it is the whole V section, each chip a full profile with its editorial links woven in or listed, a photo gallery where photos are available (eight photos across the letter, on all five profiles), and its official site in References. All five brands have an official brand route, given on their pages.

The alphabet bar below takes you across all twenty-six Men's Fashion Brands letters, V unlinked as the current letter. Both pages of navigation above the grid - the Fashion Brands section page and the Men's Fashion Brands main page - are the routes upward, in the breadcrumbs and section navigation, so the V section is never a dead end: five brands down, twenty-six letters across, and the whole brands section above.