Part XXXIII
Part XXXIII
It is interesting to compare the history of the Jockey® brand men’s underwear brief with that of the Speedo® men’s swim brief. Jockey claims to have been first with developing the idea for brief-style underwear for men. Speedo claims to invented brief-style swimwear for men. If this is all accurate, then which was invented first?
The Internet sites I have visited—manufacturer and Wikipedia claim that Jockey sold its first pair of brief-style underwear in 1935, but Speedo claims to have introduced the men’s swim brief in 1928, seven years earlier. So if these sites are accurate, Speedos actually appeared earlier than Jockey shorts.
The history of Speedo gets very complicated. What you know about Speedo originating in Australia is true, but things get complicated in that the company changed ownership multiple times over the years often appearing as a subsidiary of larger apparel companies, White Stag, Warnaco etc. Nowadays it is a subsidiary of a British firm that makes an assortment of athlete-focused gear called the Pentland Group.
Another complicating issue is that Speedo licensed the brand to other companies in various parts of the world such as Japan and South America. The sleek and skimpy Japanese Speedo looks different from a US Speedo in large measure because it is manufactured catering to Japanese male bodies and fashion sense not for the US market.
But the Speedo brand name has always been associated with designing really fast suits catering to the internationally-competitive swimmer. The brand has almost always been in the leading edge of this, but that history gets really complicated too, given that the company has been involved in the development of the full body suits and the varying FINA rules as to whether a particular suit was allowed or not to set international records.
Unlike what you may think, the original 1928 Speedo was a design that was supposed to take seconds off a swimmer’s time. The early thinking was that skin not cloth was always faster in the water and therefore minimal coverage suits would nearly always have the advantage. Bigger and loose-fitting suits would tend to contain water, slowing the swimmer down in competitions. Never mind that the minimal coverage suit tended to make the guy’s genitalia quite obvious even if covered with cloth. The ability of the suit to produce minimal drag was what really mattered.
The idea that cloth could be faster than skin is a comparatively new idea, which led to the Fastskin and LZR Racer suits—the suits that created all sorts of controversies involving international speed records with many of the designs being determined illegal by FINA rules. The Wikipedia article traces a lot of the controversies and how they have played out in recent years. Apparently record holders wearing suits deemed legal when the record was set were not forced to give up their records if the suit was declared illegal after the record was set. But this sometimes makes intertemporal comparisons of times difficult as in was the record set wearing what is now treated as an illegal suit?
To be continued…
|