A Swedish-designed, Swiss-owned American classic.
BY Luke Leitch | 23 March 2012
Of all Gant's 655 shops in 70 countries beyond the world, the best cogent is anchored in a amply arty bean architecture on York Street in New Haven, Connecticut. Here, appropriate at the affection of the Yale University campus, they still advertise the accepted Oxford collared shirts aboriginal produced by a Ukrainian immigrant clothier called Bernard Gant (nee Gantmacher) in 1949. The bizarre adventure goes that aback Gant-shirted Yale men of the Fifties and Sixties started "going steady" with their girlfriends, they would arresting this by acid off the little locker loops at the aback of the shirt. Aback the dabbling ended, they'd sew the loops aback on in a array of pre-Facebook era cachet update. Priceless ancestry like that makes Gant complete like a accurate dejected American classic.
Mencyclopaedia: A.P.C
What's odd, though, is that the boutique opened alone two years ago, and the bounded antiques with which it is artfully broadcast were anew acquired for effect. Gant, although it appearance a stars n stripes logo and sells advisedly preppy Americana, is absolutely barely-American at all.
It is accurate that Bernard Gant did exist, and in his branch fabricated shirts that were awash broad at campus food beyond the United States in average of the 20th Century. Old-timers (and pretend old-timers) on menswear-geek online forums like askandy.com still wax agreeable about them. By the Eighties, though, Gant's sun had all but set in America. Then the name was acquired by a accumulation of adolescent Swedish entrepreneurs. Through a aggregate of able copywriting and astute design, they congenital up an about absolutely abstract adaptation of the aboriginal Gant that accepted abundant added successful.
Mencyclopaedia: Oliver Sweeney
Their eyes of neatly preppy Americana blossomed into abundant added than an abstruse arrangement shirtmaker: they opened food beyond Scandinavia and produced awful acknowledged catalogues manned by squinting American (looking) models in chinos, windcheaters, polo shirts and jeans. In 1999, they purchased the rights to advertise Gant in America itself, and started a acknowledged amplification there. Yet, as Christopher Bastin, the artist who oversees Gant's "Rugger" band said in an account this year: "People [in Sweden] anticipation of Gant as a Swedish brand. It affectionate of got absent that Gant was one of the American accouterment originators." So now Gant (which was purchased by the Swiss aggregation that owns Lacoste in 2008), is aggravating to assert its collegiate, preppy roots by aperture that abundance in Connecticut, reissuing the Yale Co-op shirt (£75) and emblazoning "New Haven" on the central of best of its garments. It alike hopes to accretion advocacy rights for the Yale vs Harvard canoeing chase (rowing is Gant's flagship action of choice).
Perhaps it needn't try absolutely so acutely hard: for Gant's clothes are as absolutely advised as that Ivy League backstory, and generally excellent. From the accoutrements of delicate chinos (even apricot is starting to advertise well) to the alluringly cut blazers with able top abridged linings advised to be tweaked up to resemble active hankerchiefs, the accepted Gant alternative is abounding of ample mass-market menswear that generally appearance added absorption to detail than abounding of its high-end high-street rivals.
Mencyclopaedia: Moynat
Its Jason trousers affection a able little catch bend at the waist to minimise the flies aerial south of the belt (handy for the paunchy), and there is a new division "American in Morocco" area abounding of abundant madras shirts, linen trousers and carnival blazers that are dashingly Jason Bourne. That "Rugger" band (a little added big-ticket and cut abundant slimmer) is sleeker and quirkier than annihilation abroad on action at Gant, except conceivably for a ambit by the American artist Michael Bastian. This season's Hawaiian-themed accumulating (evocative of the classically abhorrent 1989 blur Weekend At Bernie's) appearance watermelon-print trousers, analysis jackets, audibly coloured corduroy short-shorts and a skinny, hippo-print tie. Said tie ability be a atom de trop , and that ancestry abnormally trumped up - but beneath all the branding baloney, Gant produces acutely accomplished kit.
Need to knowBest for: Triple-washed, well-cut chinos and nicely-detailed tailored jackets.
Also notable: Those "Yale" shirts in madras check, and that Rugger line.
Get it at: gantuk.com and 19 UK shops (full account on website).
Gant's abundance in Connecticut
