Ben Sherman

The shirts were a huge success, offering something brand new and previously unseen in England.

Interestingly it was exactly at this time that the first British youth culture was in full flow; the post war teddy boys. This movement had shown a new generation of youth that clothing could be a key indicator of their beliefs and signal their belonging to a culture or movement.

A second wave of young men came along who loved the sharp Italian style and this group went by the name of ‘ the modernists’ who quickly became known as ‘mods’. This British youth culture embraced the Ben Sherman shirt, loving it for its quality, slim-fitting style, its colour and unique design.

The feeling was that there simply had never been anything on the English scene like it. The Ben Sherman shirt was revolutionary and so was the ‘mod movement’. Through fashion and music, London and Britain were cool again, the swinging 60’s was in full flow and the atmosphere was euphoric.

Ben Sherman opened a showroom on Carnaby street and soon afterwards opened 2 stores in London as well as a store in Brighton (his Brighton store was called ‘millions of shirts inc. ltd) Ben Sherman could not produce shirts fast enough and orders often exceeded production capacity. It is famously quoted that in 1970 Ben Sherman ordered a million yards of oxford cloth, a quarter of a million of gingham fabric and a quarter of a million yards of colourful striped material from his American fabric mill. This is testament to the popularity of the Ben Sherman shirt.