Category: Brands

A comprehensive resource of defunct t-shirt labels manufactured prior to the year 2000. Brand #14: Mayo Spruce Circulation: Fairly Common Era: 1950-80s Information: Trademarked by the Washington Mills Company in the mid 1950s as a men’s and boy’s undergarment label. The brand flourished as the t-shirt became standard outerwear and blanks for printing were in heavy demand. The trademark expired in 1996 until 2009 when Country Trading Co. Ltd. out of Japan filed for the trademark, likely to make use of their familiar vintage branding. The registration was opposed in 2010 and there appears to be an intellectual property dispute ... Read more

A comprehensive resource of defunct t-shirt labels manufactured prior to the year 2000. Brand #13: Sneakers Circulation: Fairly Common Era: 1980s Information: Nothing is known about the company behind this tag except that they manufactured blank tees in the 1980s. The Sneakers brand is one of the few vintage t-shirts that advertised a brand name polyester in their fabric blend. Kodel Polyester was developed in 1958 by Eastman Chemical Products as an inexpensive durable artificial fiber and paved the way for an explosion of poly usage in the 1960s. But a poly/cotton blend wasn’t the only one up Sneakers’ sleeves ... Read more

A comprehensive resource of defunct t-shirt labels manufactured prior to the year 2000. Brand #12: Sportswear Circulation: Common Era: 1960s? to 1990 Information: Aside from their ever-evolving tag design and heavy circulation not much is known about Sportswear. I had to resort to advanced internet technology to discover more info. How? By inputting the RN# that appears on the first tag above (41253) in to the FTC database (a technique I learned from a post written by the savvy members of our forum.) That RN is registered to Granite Knitwear Inc. which I then plugged into Google and connected it ... Read more

The roots of Anvil can be traced back to a 130-year-old brand of men’s undergarments known as BVD. In 1976 the BVD trademark was sold to Fruit of the Loom so the company began operating as Anvil Knitwear. There are also pre-1976 Anvil roots with the Ched tag. Anvil considers itself one of the catalysts in the evolution of the t-shirt. 1976-1994 1976 BVD sold its trademark, so its subsidiaries would continue as Anvil and Anvil Knitwear. 1976-1985 1979-1983 1984-1988 1985-1989 1986-1990 1988-1990 1989-1993 1991-1997 1992-1999 1993-1994 1996 Vintage Brands Insider Sign-up Email*: Subscribe 1995-2003 In 1995 Anvil is acquired ... Read more

A comprehensive resource of defunct t-shirt labels manufactured prior to the year 2000. Brand #10: Velva Sheen Circulation: Common Era: 1930s to Present Information: Velva Sheen was conceived in 1936 as a humble garment operation under the direction of Oscar Schroeder. Velva differentiated itself from other knitwear companies by offering “lettered” garments which were detailed with custom text. As the t-shirt evolved the lettering was replaced by pioneering methods of printing with ink. After 20 years of hard work Oscar sold the business to Robert and William Reilly who continued to expand the operation. In the late 1970s and throughout ... Read more