Sunspel

Sunspel was founded in 1860 in Long Eaton, England by Thomas Hill as a small British cotton-knitwear workshop specifically focused on producing technically-engineered cotton underwear and casual cotton-knitwear for the British luxury-gentleman community. The brand has been continuously operating from the same Long Eaton factory for over 165 years and is one of the longest-continuously-operating British cotton-knitwear brands still operating under its founding name. The Sunspel vocabulary settled around several specific products: the iconic Sunspel Riviera Polo Shirt (the brand's defining product since the 1950s — a fine-knit Egyptian-cotton polo shirt that became culturally famous as the Sean Connery James Bond polo shirt worn in Dr. No 1962), the Sunspel T-Shirt (a defining heavyweight Sea-Island-cotton tee that has been the brand's anchoring cotton product), the Sunspel Q14 underwear programme, hand-finished cotton-and-merino-wool knitwear, and a colour palette anchored to washed-cream, ecru, oxblood, washed-charcoal, washed-navy, plus the brand's recurring use of natural-undyed cotton and the iconic British-everyday-luxury aesthetic colour combinations. Production is entirely British at the Long Eaton factory using traditional Egyptian-and-Sea-Island-cotton-knitwear construction. The brand is independent and held by Idris Mootee (the Indian-American luxury-investment partner who acquired Sunspel from the Hill family in 2005). Sunspel operates flagship retail in London (Redchurch Street — the brand's home London flagship; Marylebone; Mayfair), Edinburgh, plus international flagships in New York (West Village), Tokyo (Aoyama, Daikanyama), Seoul (Hannam-dong), plus international wholesale through MR PORTER, MATCHES, Beams Plus, the broader Japanese-and-American luxury menswear specialty network. The brand has been one of the most rigorously committed continuously-British-manufactured cotton-knitwear brands.