Fred Perry collection this year has been by far the best yet. Next season the summer
styles are sleek and tailored to fit he body. There will be a host of new colours
added to the pallet for the polo tops. The shirting and fine guage knitwear is a
complete must, and each fabric and colour has been hand picked for each
design. The stock is always limited with Fred Perry so it's best to get in early
if you don't want to miss out on the best styles.
The Brand History:
Frederick John Perry (18 May 1909 – 2 February 1995) born in Stockport,
Cheshire, was an English tennis and table tennis player and three-time wimbledon
champion. He was the World no.1player for five years, four of them consecutive,
1934 to 1938, the first three years as an amateur. He was the last Englishman to
win the Wimbledon, US Open, French Open and Australian Open Men's Singles
How Fred Perry became a clothing brand:
In the late 1940s, Perry was approached by Tibby Wegner, an Austrian footballer
who had invented an anti-perspirant device worn around the wrist. Perry made a
few changes and invented the sweatband. Wegner's next idea was to produce
a sports shirt, which was to be made from white knitted cotton pique with
short sleeves and buttons down the front. Launched at Wimbledon in 1952,
the Fred Perry polo shirt was an immediate success. The brand is best known for
its laurel logo, which appears on the left breast of the tennis shirts.
The laurel logo (based on the old Wimbledon symbol) was stitched into the
fabric of the shirt instead of merely ironed on (as was the case with the
crocodile logo of the competing Lacoste brand).
The polo shirt was only available in white until the late 50s when the mods picked
up on it and demanded a more varied colour palette. It was the shirt of choice for
diverse groups of teenagers throughout the 1960s and 70s, ranging from the skinheads
to the Northern Soul scene and Manchester's very own "Perry Boys", a group
of violent football supporters whose exploits were recently documented in the
book of that name by author Ian Hough.
In recent years, the "indie mods" have picked up on Fred Perry and,
once again, the brand has become radical and highly fashionable.
