BEN SHERMAN – “BANG” T-SHIRT

Limited “Bondastic Bang” Edition (A Kind Of “From Russia With Love” Design!) Ben Sherman / Ben Sherman Switzerland Limited Edition In Black And White (Size: Large)

Ben Sherman History: The company was founded in 1963 by Arthur Benjamin Sugarman (1925-1987), who was born in Brighton. He emigrated to the United States in 1946, via Canada, and changed his nationality to American. He married the daughter of a Californian clothes producer and later returned to Brighton, where he bought a shirt factory. Sugarman had realised that early 1960s London-based modern jazz fans were eagerly buying the Oxford-cloth American button-down shirt brands such as Brooks Brothers, Arrow and Hathaway, as sported by visiting American jazz artists like Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson. At the time, these were only available from official importers who had in effect, cornered this growing market.

Sugarman decided to produce a version of these shirts, along with a collection of the colourful resortwear vacation clothes that were growing in popularity, in both the post-war US, and Mediterranean Europe. Mods responded immediately, especially as Sugarman was using higher-quality materials and stitching detail than the imported shirts. The Ben Sherman Originals label was created, and by 1965, the company had opened a office on the upper floors of a shabby office-block in a London backstreet.

This acted as the showroom for their shirt and beachwear collections. By the late 1960s, the shirt was adopted by the skinhead subculture, and starting in the late 1970s, the shirt became popular with mod revivalists.

BEN SHERMAN, ENGLAND 2011

Categories: 1963 From Russia With Love, Cap/Clothing/Keyrings, Films, Goodies, Goodies 2010s, Memorabilia