Item 2018.54 - Raf Simons x Fred Perry Knitted Tennis Shirt

Fred Perry Sportswear 1952–95 Fred Perry 1995–present
Fred Perry Sportswear was founded in 1952 by British tennis player Fred Perry (1905–95) and Austrian entrepreneur Tibby Wegner (1906–95), initially producing sweatbands and later tennis shirts and shorts. The original Fred Perry shirts were inspired by those worn by French player René Lacoste. Wegner brought a Lacoste shirt from the sports department store Lillywhites, in Piccadilly Circus, took it to a factory in Leicester and had it replicated as a Fred Perry shirt. The laurel wreath logo was adapted from the wreath design that featured on the purple silk ribbons awarded to Wimbledon champions by the All England Tennis Club. The first Fred Perry shirts were produced in 1952 and were given away to players at Wimbledon that year. Selling for 21 shillings, they were stocked by Lillywhites and London department store Harrods. They marketed the shirts by giving them free of charge to celebrities including Charlton Heston, Bing Crosby and John F. Kennedy. Not long after, Wegner dyed several of the shirts in assorted colours for his golfing friends and began selling them, transitioning the business from sportswear to menswear.
In 1964 Wegner sold the company to rainwear manufacturer Mackintosh, who retained Fred Perry to market the products. Figgie International, based in Ohio, purchased Fred Perry Sportswear in 1973, expanding the brand from classic tennis shirts to include tennis, golf and leisure apparel. They sold the company in 1995 to Japanese licensee Hit Union. At the time, the company’s turnover was under US$20 million. In 2003 the company announced a partnership with Comme des Garçons to produce a Fred Perry / Comme des Garçons shirt range which launched in Spring Summer 2004. In 2005, Scottish tennis player Andy Murray was contracted to wear the Fred Perry shirt at Wimbledon. In 2006 the company launched a higher-end line called Blank Canvas, partnering with British designers, including Jessica Ogden and Peter Jensen. Fred Perry and Belgian designer Raf Simons collaborated on collections from Autumn 2008 to 2011, and then again from 2013 until the closure of the Raf Simons brand in 2023. In 2019 Fred Perry opened a flagship store at 483 Broome Street, New York, in addition to its existing stores in Boston and Brooklyn. In total, in 2019 the brand had 250 shops worldwide. In 2021 Fred Perry collaborated with Charles Jeffrey Loverboy on three separate capsule collections. Nicholas Daley, a British menswear designer, partnered with Fred Perry to create three capsule collections between 2019 and 2021. Fred Perry has also collaborated with several other brands including A Bathing Ape (2016), Mastermind (2019), Casely-Hayford (2020), narifuri (2020) and Akane Utsunomiya (2020). In 2021 Fred Perry bought British shoemaker George Cox.
Sources: Drapers; Hypebeast; Jon Henderson, The Last Champion: The Life of Fred Perry (London: Yellow Jersey Press, 2009); The Wall Street Journal; WWD.