The Times Newspaper, 25th July 2006
Robert Elms is stepping out his old pants for the first time in ten years. Here’s why:
When did you last change your underwear? I’m not ashamed to admit that it’s been more than a decade since I pulled on a different pair of pants. I’m a conservative man when it comes to what I wrap around the family heirlooms. Having discovered what I believe to be the world’s finest undergarments, and what’s more knowing that I am making a patriotic statement every time I slip on my scants, I can see no logical reason to wear anything else. But now after years of dutifully donning the same pants day after day I’ve discovered that my underwear is changing on me.
Y-fronts or boxers, patterned or plain, white or coloured, tight or baggy? The underwear department is full of potential dilemmas, but I’ve been blissfully free from such considerations for so long because I found the perfect pants and the best vests and T-shirts. Every day I reach into the drawer – safe in the knowledge that I don’t have to decide between a black satin thong and a polka-dot posing pouch – and blindly pull out a pair of white cotton two-ply Sunspel boxers and probably a white Sunspel T-shirt too. I can start dressing without even looking, safe in the knowledge that whatever ensemble goes on top my attire is built on sound foundations.
Sunspel was a deeply traditional British company based in an antediluvian factory in Derbyshire, which has been making exemplary gentlemen’s underwear, out of the loveliest cotton available, for more than 100 years. Family-owned and fantastically conservative, its stuff came in any colour so long as it was white and any style so long as it was the same one they’d been making forever. Stocked in pitifully few places, never advertised and known about only by a small coterie of devotees – many of them fashion industry insiders who appreciated the flawless quality of their fabrics and finishing – Sunspel was like a secret small club. But now the company has been bought by a couple of younger guys who wish to spread the word, widen the appeal and even add to the styles on offer. And what’s more I don’t even mind that somebody is messing with my unmentionables
Unlike women’s lingerie, men’s under garments are thankfully less prone to the vicissitudes and vagaries of being in or out of vogue. But there is still a baffling array of styles and shapes out there. You could opt for a thong, a string, a strap or a tanga, a boxer, a brief, a microbrief or a boxer brief; there are underpants with horizontal openings, padded pouches, Lurex patterns and elephant trunks dangling from the crotch. But who wears that stuff? Surely most of us want decent, comfortable undies, which are functional, flattering but not farcical. It also seems that many of us want, or at least buy, underwear that comes with a foreign designer logo. Calvin Klein has been the market leader for ages, but such high fashion houses as Dolce & Gabbana, Pierre Cardin, Ralph Lauren, Versace, Ted Baker and Boss all flog us loads of pants, despite the fact that there is not really much of a fashion in these things. Now perhaps it’s time for timeless British quality to restart itself. Sunspel is not the only home-grown name in the game. At the younger, testosterone fuelled end of the market, a company called Brass Monkeys describes itself as “100 per cent pure British mettle”, and promotes its products with talk of “fun in your pants” and pictures of muscular torsos bulging rather extravagantly in all the right places. One of its ads – for The Lion King – was recently rebuked by the British Advertising Standards Authority for being “too big”. Definitely aimed at the six-pack and lunch box boys, Brass Monkeys is based in Leicestershire, but the real underpant centre is a little farther north in Derbyshire.
John Smedley, a family-owned company based in Lea Mills, Matlock, our most famous purveyors of fine cotton and woollen tops and sweaters, also makes a range of ultra luxurious sea-island cotton singlets, T-shirts and long-cut shorts. But it is so expensive and elusive, available only through mail-order, that it’s a rare treat – and a little too sumptuous and delicate for everyday wear. Whereas Sunspel, which has been based in Long Eaton just south of Nottingham since the firm was founded by the Hill family in 1850, makes the kind of affordable, durable smalls that a man like me will wear every day for decades. And now it is going to make more of them.
More than a year ago 83 year old Peter Hill finally retired and sold the company to a couple of Sunspel fans who had no rag-trade experience but knew a good knicker when they wore one. Dominic Hazlehurst and Nick Brooke came from the worlds of business and law respectively but were sure they could make a go of a classic British brand, which still had a loyal customer base, great if limited products, but almost no profile. Although almost everybody has subconsciously seen a pair of Sunspel boxers because they’re precisely the garments the model Nick Kamen stripped down to – to Heard it Through the Grapevine – in the legendary Levi’s laundrette ad in 1985.
“We’d both worn those shorts, knew they were the best and couldn’t believe that the company wasn’t better known,” Brooke says. “Then we heard it was for sale, we checked out and discovered a treasure waiting to be revived. It was old fashioned, but had great contemporary possibilities. You can’t create that sort of history.”
Bill Amberg, the groovy leather goods designer, was brought on board and they set about trying to modernise the brand, while retaining that unique feel. The logo and packaging were subtly altered and new stockists were secured. The classic white boxers and T-shirts in long staple Egyptian cotton remain, but a new and slightly sleeker cut has been introduced, with a daring button on the fly of the undies. But most importantly they have started to branch out. Working with such British fashion luminaries as Richard James, Gieves & Hawkes and Margaret Howell, Sunspel now produces ranges of underwear and outerwear for those labels, and had a co-branding with the mighty Paul Smith.
It also found a vast archive of granddad vests, Y-fronts, T-shirts, longjohns, polo shirts, sleepwear and even a women’s range. “All that wonderful stuff was just sitting there in drawers, in its packaging, untouched for generations.” Many of those classic styles will be reintroduced as a full Sunspel onslaught is launched next year.
By then every cool dude in town will be hankering after a pair of their pants. In a clever piece of product placement, Sunspel has provided Daniel Craig’s smalls, which will be paraded in the new Bond film Casion Royale. Personally, I’ve always thought I had a licence to thrill in those underpants.
Brief history…
- The earliest surviving example of primitive underwear is a leather loincloth found in the Alps on the skeleton of a man who died in 4700BC.
- The basic loincloth was an enduring style across ages and empires. Tutankhamen was buried with 145 linen loincloths. The Romans called theirs sublicalum, and every soldier wore a pair under his armour.
- In the Middle Ages, underwear styles broadened. Men opted for braies, a loose, trouser-like clothing, with wealthier men also wearing chausses, which covered only the legs. Both could also be worn without other garments over them.
- The codpiece was all the rage in the 16th century. Henry VIII was fond of padding his. This inspired a trend of sizable codpieces that went on until the end of the century. They also sometimes handily doubled as pockets. The Industrial Revolution brought about the mass production of the male underwear.
- Throughout the 20th century developments continued, with the “union suit” of the early 1900s, through to the reduction of buttons and the evolution of pre-shrunk fabrics to the revolutionary “jockey” (Y-fronts with overlapping fly) model of the 1930s. Boxer shorts were also an innovation of this era.
- The war years slowed the progress of underwear, but gents coloured underwear became popular after the discovery by American soldiers that freshly washed white pants hung out to dry attracted enemy fire.
- In the postwar era, boxers and briefs proved as popular as ever with new developments in colour and print. Today the emphasis is on sexiness rather than durability or even comfort.
Featured in: The Times Newspaper, 25th July ‘06
Author: Emily Sharrat
