A pair of early Everlasts
The early decades of the 20th century were a hotbed of innovation in all kinds of fields. In 1917 a young businessman named Jacob Golomb, whose company made long-lasting swimwear (hence the name Everlast), was introduced to boxing by a pugilist called Jack Dempsey. Dempsey asked Golomb to make him some protective headgear that would last much longer in sparring than the headgear that then existed. Golomb made the headgear, it worked, and he looked around for something else to redesign.
Just two years later Jack Dempsey won the world heavyweight championship wearing a pair of new Everlast gloves, and suddenly everyone wanted a piece of the brand.
By 1925 Golomb had turned his attention to the restrictive, often leather-belted trunks boxers then wore (see below right). His solution was a much looser fitting pair of shorts held up by an elasticated waistband. No tight trousers to slow down leg movement and no rigid leather belt to get in the way.
Like almost everything Everlast did, the new shorts were soon all the rage. So popular, in fact, that by the early 30s ‘boxer shorts’ were being made as underwear by enterprising manufacturers, giving men a new freedom down below.
Before the boxer short, men’s underwear left a lot to be desired. Your standard undercarriage kit was a pair of tight-fitting woollen or flannel drawers. Imagine sealing yourself inside them every morning. Probably quite cosy in winter, but in summer they would have been unpleasantly constricting. (There must be a close correlation between the restrictiveness of underwear and the level of sexual and social constrictions, because as society became more unbuttoned, so underwear loosened up.)
The success of boxer-shorts-as-underwear was soon eclipsed by yet another underwear innovation. The Jockey Y-front was introduced in 1935 and became an immediate sensation; 30,000 were sold in the first three months.
It wasn’t until after the Second World War that the boxer’s cooler appeal began to reassert itself. Now, at last, Britain could experience the feeling too.
In 1947 one of Sunspel’s directors, John Hill, brought a pair of boxers back with him from a trip to the States. The company immediately set about reproducing the design – and ended up perfecting it.
This classic boxer short was what Nick Kamen stripped to reveal in the famous Levi’s ‘laundrette’ ad in 1985. Just like decades earlier with Everlast’s shorts, suddenly everyone wanted to wear them. A design classic had hit the mainstream.