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Burton became the label for Montague Burton Ltd in 1954 after a company restructure and merger with Jackson the Tailor. This resulted in a complete redesign and launch of a comprehensive new advertising campaign aimed at young male consumers. In 1969 the company became the Burton Group. Its demerger in 1997 led to the establishment of the Arcadia Group. In 2020 the Arcadia Group went into administration and in February 2021 the Burton brand, e-commerce and digital assets and associated intellectual property rights were sold to online fashion retailer Boohoo.

Montague Burton Ltd was founded in the early 1900s by Jewish immigrant Montague Burton (1885-1952). Born a Lithuanian Jew named Meshe David Osinsky, he travelled to the north of England in 1900 and quickly entered the men's tailoring trade, changing his name at some point after his arrival. After starting with a shop selling menswear he began manufacturing and adopted the multiple tailoring model pioneered by the Leeds-based tailoring trade. Multiple tailors had high street stores selling made-to-measure men's suits (and smaller numbers of ready-to-wear) which were cut and sewn in factories owned by the same business. By the end of the 1930s Montague Burton Ltd had over 700 outlets across Great Britain and Ireland and their Hudson Road factory in Leeds was the biggest clothing factory in Europe.

In 1946 the company purchased the Peter Robinson department store and in 1968 it was the top floor of Sheffield's Peter Robinson which was the origin of Top Shop. Aimed at selling fashionable clothes to 15-25 year-old women it was immediately successful and became a retail chain in its own right. Burton attempted to reach young men with the Mr Burt label and stores in the early 1970s but they were not profitable. In 1978 after a major restructure and store closures the company again tried to cater to the young male fashion market with the launch of Top Man - by 1980 they had expanded to 45 shops.

While attending Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo, Jun Takahashi (b. 1969) and Nigo (born Tomoaki Nagao) (b. 1970) founded the label Undercover. In 1993, they opened the NOWHERE store in Harajuku, Tokyo. Undercover first showed at Tokyo Fashion Week in 1994, and first showed off-schedule at Paris Fashion Week in October 2002. In 2001, as part of the Spring Summer collection, Takahashi debuted his menswear line Undercoverism. In 2010 the company collaborated with Nike on an activewear line called Gyakusou and in 2012 the label designed a capsule collection with Uniqlo called UU. The range consisted of 100 pieces for men, women and children, and was produced for two seasons. Diffusion line John UNDERCOVER was launched in 2013, along with Sue UNDERCOVER, and in 2016 a seasonless line called the shepherd UNDERCOVER was launched. Also in 2016, the company partnered with Supreme and with Dr. Martens to produce versions of their 8-Eye Boot and a 3-Eye Shoe. Undercover collaborated with Dr. Martens on five more occasions. The label has designed collections with KAWS, NikeLab, Eastpak, GU, Converse, Vault by Vans and Hello Kitty.

Sources: Hypebeast; Robert Klanten, The New Luxury: Defining the Aspirational in the Age of Hype, ed. Jian DeLeon (Berlin: Gestalten and Highsnobiety, 2019); SSENSE; Straits Times; The Guardian.