Munsingwear Original Penguin History

← Back to the current Munsingwear Original Penguin profile

The Company Description of Its Time

In 1955, Minneapolis-based Munsingwear - an underwear and military supply company - ironically became the touchstone of suburban sport with the introduction of the first iconic golf shirt to America, an ORIGINAL PENGUIN. The irony in that sentence is the filing's own, and it is earned: a company whose business was underwear and military supply did not set out to dress golfers, yet its shirt outlasted almost everything else it made. This page is the single-brand filing inside the Perry Ellis family in this letter. Its parent company's full portfolio, licensing and distribution record lives on the separate Perry Ellis International profile, cross-linked below and in this page's chips; here, the subject is one shirt, one bird and one unusually durable idea about leisure.

The 1955 Shirt, the Action Gusset and the Suburban Leisure Years

Its first shirt, the 1955, was an instant golf classic, the filing says, and the first to feature an action gusset - a ribbed slice of fabric on the underarm to avoid rips during even the most enthusiastic golf swing. That detail deserves attention because it explains why the shirt belonged on a golf course rather than merely being worn on one: the gusset is a functional invention answering a real failure, a shirt tearing under the arm at the top of a swing. An ORIGINAL PENGUIN by Munsingwear became a staple among the masters of suburban leisure well into the 1980s, worn by the likes of Arnold Palmer, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Richard Nixon, a wearer list that mixes golf royalty, entertainment and a president without ranking them.

Those four names also date the brand's first life precisely. Palmer made it credible as equipment, Hope and Crosby made it the uniform of the celebrity pro-am era, and Nixon made it ordinary enough to be suburban. When a single knit shirt can be read simultaneously as sporting gear and as leisure clothing, it occupies the exact ground this profile claims for it: the touchstone of suburban sport. The photograph carried with this filing, a 2009 image of Original Penguin shirts by Munsingwear, is referenced in the gallery below by the historical record file, unaltered and unshipped, as the preservation rule requires.

Recreated in 2003, Filed Under Perry Ellis

In 2003, an ORIGINAL PENGUIN was recreated by a group of people who love great style and smart clothing, in the historical record's own affectionate wording. Recreations of heritage brands usually keep the logo and change everything else; the point of the 2003 return, as its parent profile in this letter records in parallel, was to relaunch Original Penguin by Munsingwear as a lifestyle brand rich in heritage but geared towards modern, youth-minded consumers. Munsingwear (Original Penguin) is a division of Perry Ellis, and that sentence is the whole corporate structure a reader of this page needs: the brand's history is its own, its ownership sits with Perry Ellis International.

Perry Ellis International itself is described in this filing in one summary sentence, as a leading licensor, designer and marketer of high quality menswear, and its full brand roster is deliberately not repeated here, because repeating it would make this page a copy of its parent. Instead, this page's kept links carry the working routes a researcher actually needs: the Perry Ellis profile itself, the Original Penguin brand page for men in the Clothes Guide brands section, Perry Ellis stock information, Perry Ellis news, and the fashion careers route at Perry Ellis. Start here for the penguin; follow the chips to the parent for the portfolio. That division of labour is how this directory keeps two filings about one family from saying the same thing twice.

Photos

← Back to the current Munsingwear Original Penguin profile