BORN IN 1949
For GANT, it all began with shirts. They never stopped reinventing them. The combination of our founder Bernard Gantmacher's dedication to quality and his sons Marty and Elliot's sense of style and business proved to be a winning formula.
REACHING THE RIGHT CROWD (1949 - 1959)
Marty and Elliot insisted that only the best was acceptable for GANT products. They understood the family business so well that they even changed their name – Gantmacher became Gant. They also understood the power of advertising. They wanted their products to always be seen in the right places. This meant supplying only the best stores in town and advertising in The New Yorker.
The first issue of The New Yorker was published in February 1925 with a drawing of a monocle-wearing dandy on the cover. It was a new kind of magazine that appealed to a new kind of readership.
"The New Yorker will not be edited for the old lady in Dubuque," wrote founding editor Harold Ross. "It will not be concerned with what she is thinking about. This is not meant disrespectfully, but The New Yorker is a magazine expressly for a metropolitan audience."
It attracted the best and wittiest writers, everyone from J.D. Salinger and Vladimir Nabokov to Dorothy Parker and F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. It was not only choosy about which writers it published, but also which ads it accepted. It declined commercials that didn’t fit the magazine’s tone.
One of the companies that met the requirements was GANT. Initially, Marty and Elliot could only afford 1/8-page black-and-white ads every few months. Gradually, they moved to larger and more frequent ads, featuring the Oxford shirt in four different photos and four different situations, eventually running eight full-color ads in one year. The campaign spread the message that GANT produced the kind of shirts that the bright young sophisticates of the time were wearing.
COLOR EXPLOSION
Elliot Gant once said, "Let’s not try to be everything to everybody. We’re individuals. When you think for yourself, you can be tastefully different."
As the new decade began, the Ivy League Look became even more distinctive and debonair. GANT developed more and more boldly colored shirts in unusual fabrics, including Madras, candy stripes, and tartan. These shirts were in tune with the revolutionary mood of the Fifties. This became known as the "Oxford Colour Explosion," and it has been a key feature of the Ivy League Look ever since. Eventually, Marty and Elliot even forbade their sales staff from wearing white shirts while working.
THE MARK OF QUALITY
From the outset, GANT was known for the quality of its shirts. In the early days, when the company supplied shirts to other retailers, a discreet GANT trademark was added: a little diamond with a “G” in it stamped on the tail of the shirt. This mark was the customer’s assurance of quality just as much as the retailer’s label inside the collar. By the mid-1950s, the Diamond G had become part of American menswear history – a distinctive sign of superior quality that helped make the signature shirts coveted best sellers, with demand far outstripping supply.
The 1950s was a time of unprecedented growth in America, and GANT shirts helped define the casual-yet-smart look that dominated the post-war years. GANT’s detailed craftsmanship and effortless American style appealed to a generation of men who had spent years wearing military issue clothing and who had now returned home to take their place in the booming middle class.
They appreciated the perfect roll of a GANT collar and the quality of fabric one could expect with a GANT shirt. And soon they would appreciate another quality that GANT pioneered: color. For decades the plain white shirt had dominated menswear but that was all about to change forever. An explosion of color was coming – and that explosion sparked in the town of New Haven, Connecticut.
TODAY
In 1999, the GANT brand was acquired by the Swedish company Pyramid Sportswear, enabling further global expansion. GANT continues to produce high-quality clothing and footwear that combines American sports elegance with sophisticated European style. The company focuses on sustainability and innovation while staying true to its roots and heritage.
GANT's history is full of innovation and a relentless pursuit of quality, which has placed the brand at the top of the global fashion industry.