Wrangler

Wrangler was founded in 1947 in Greensboro, North Carolina by Hudson Overall Company (later renamed Blue Bell Inc.) as a specifically-rodeo-and-cowboy-focused denim brand designed in collaboration with professional Texas rodeo cowboy Jim Shoulders. The brand's foundational thesis was specific and physically-functional: produce denim work-trousers specifically engineered for the technical demands of professional rodeo riding (deeper rise to accommodate horseback riding, reinforced rivet placement avoiding saddle-rub points, deeper pockets for working-cowboy-tool storage), at a deliberately-functional price tier positioning the brand as the working-cowboy alternative to Levi's broader denim category. The Wrangler vocabulary settled around several specific products: the iconic Wrangler 13MWZ Cowboy Cut (the brand's defining product since 1947, still in production with the original cowboy-cut high-rise straight-leg construction), the Wrangler Wrancher dress-trouser variant, various western-shirts with snap-front and yoke-and-pocket detailing, and a colour palette anchored to natural-indigo (the brand's defining colour), washed-tan, oxblood, ecru, plus the brand's recurring use of authentic-rodeo-aesthetic colour combinations. The post-2010 revival of vintage Wrangler product through the broader Americana-workwear-revival generation has anchored a new wave of brand cultural relevance. Wrangler is owned by Kontoor Brands, the publicly-listed (NYSE: KTB) American denim conglomerate that was spun off from VF Corporation in 2019. The brand operates approximately 6,000 retail-and-wholesale points-of-distribution globally, with particular strength in the broader American-Southwest, Texan, and rural-American denim-distribution network. The brand has also launched the higher-tier Wrangler Heritage and Wrangler Wrancher heritage-revival sub-lines that have anchored the brand's broader post-2010 Americana-workwear-revival cultural relevance, with the long-running Wrangler × Aimé Leon Dore, Wrangler × Pop Trading Company, and Wrangler × Reigning Champ collaborations extending the brand's reach into the contemporary luxury-streetwear conversation.