Jantzen Women's Fashion Brand

In 1910, Portland Knitting Company began in downtown Portland, Oregon, with a few hand-knitting machines above a tiny retail store. Little did founders Carl Jantzen, Roy and John Zehntbauer know that they would achieve both fame and controversy as swimwear pioneers. That modest beginning - a handful of machines over a small shop - is the founding fact of one of America's swimwear names, and everything on this page is product history: how a knitting company became a swimsuit brand, told through the garments it made and the mark it put on them.

Producing a wool suit for a rowing team, they began offering bathing suits in their catalog. Knit on sweater cuff machines, the suits became popular with swimmers. Hold that detail, because it explains the product: a swimsuit knitted on cuff machinery was close, elastic and made to move in the water, a working garment for people who actually swam, before it was a poolside fashion item. Jantzen is a brand of swimwear, and the brand name later replaced the name of the parent company that manufactured the branded products - the suits had become bigger than the mill.

The Diving Girl and Jantzen Knitting Mills

The brand featured a logo image of a young woman dressed in a red one-piece swimsuit and bathing hat, assuming a diving posture with outstretched arms and an arched back. Known as the Jantzen Diving Girl, the image in various forms became famous throughout the world during the early twentieth century. As a piece of product branding it is unusually durable: one red suit, one dive, readable at a glance on a label or a shop sign. When you meet vintage or heritage-styled Jantzen swimwear, that red one-piece in the mark is the reference point the whole design is quoting.

The demand increased for those Jantzens and the company name was changed in 1918 to Jantzen Knitting Mills- eight years from a tiny retail store's upper floor to a company renamed for its swimsuits. Shopping the modern line, keep the product lessons of that history in hand: judge a suit by its knit and recovery, stretching and releasing a handful of fabric to see it return; check straps, seams and lining as construction, the way a cuff-knit suit was judged; and treat the classic one-piece silhouette as the brand's home ground, refined over a century rather than reinvented each season.

1950s Glamour, Modern Interpretations

Reminiscent of the glamorous 1950s classic bathing beauties, Jantzen pays homage to this timeless era with modern interpretations. That sentence is the modern range's design brief, stated as product terms: classic mid-century suit shapes - the structured one-piece, the elegant neckline, the polished poolside cover-up - rebuilt with contemporary fabrics and construction. Shop it literally: if you love the 1950s silhouette, this is a brand whose homage is its stated purpose, and the modern interpretation should show in easier care, better stretch and a fit graded for today's sizing rather than a costume copy of a vintage suit.

Jantzen has achieved new levels of success this decade through social media, attracting fans around the world who share their own memories about their favourite Jantzen suits throughout the decades- a heritage carried by customers' own wardrobes as much as by the company. Care for any suit as the product it is: rinse after swimming, wash gently, dry flat away from direct sun, and keep lotions off the fabric where you can. The brand's official site, jantzen.com, is linked in References below. Founded 1910 in Portland, renamed for its suits in 1918, marked by the Diving Girl: Jantzen is swimwear history you can still buy as a product.

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