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  • In the Mood for Munsingwear: Minnesota’s Claim to Underwear Fame
  • Jill Fields
Susan Marks, In the Mood for Munsingwear: Minnesota’s Claim to Underwear Fame (Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society Press 2011)

InTheMoodfor Munsingwear: Minnesota’s Claim to Underwear Fame is a brief and lively history of the Minnesota-based underwear manufacturer Munsingwear told largely from the company’s point of view. Author Susan Marks mines the rich materials Munsingwear donated to the Minnesota Historical Society to provide an overview of the company, from its founding in Minneapolis as the Northwest Knitting Company in 1886 by George Munsing and two associates, to its 1923 incorporation as the dominant manufacturer in the trade, to its nadir in 1981 when what was touted earlier in the century to be the world’s largest underwear factory closed its doors. However, this did not mean the end of the Munsingwear brand; its trademarks and logos are currently owned by fashion giant Perry Ellis International, Inc. Written as a catalogue to accompany a museum exhibition at the Minnesota History Center, the 116-page book is lavishly illustrated with black and white and colour images of factory buildings, conditions and amenities, notable individuals, workers on the job, company social functions, promotional materials, and advertisements.

George Munsing’s distinctive and profitable 19th-century innovation was in creating a fabric incorporating silk and wool from which one-piece undergarments for men and women that combined undershirt and underpants, known as union suits, were produced. The blended fabric made these union suits more comfortable than the notoriously itchy all-wool variety Americans living in cold climates commonly wore. In fact the improved garments proved so popular that the Northwest Knitting Company was almost a victim of its early success. Orders went unfilled because the company couldn’t handle the demand, and disgruntled customers wrote letters complaining they had not received promised goods and cancelling orders. An infusion of capital in 1887 by three wealthy businessmen who joined the board of directors, including Charles A. Pillsbury of flour mill fame, provided the needed funds to expand output. The 650,000 square foot Minneapolis factory was built between 1904 and 1915; workers produced 10,000 garments a day there by 1917.

Like other American companies, Munsingwear benefitted from government contracts during both world wars. Between the wars, the company had expanded production beyond multiple styles of union suits to include a range of fashionable women’s body-shaping garments and hosiery. Thus, Munsingwear was well positioned to profit further during the post-war economic boom. To take fuller advantage of such possibilities, Munsing wear acquired two brands known for their alluring intimate apparel, Vassar of Chicago and Hollywood-Maxwell of Los Angeles, and manufactured brassieres, sleep wear, lingerie, and delicate undergarments in addition to supplying contemporary corsetry revived by post-war fashion trends for waist cinching. These garments were produced in a range of colours, prints, and styles and marketed under their own labels and for the risqué Frederick’s of Hollywood. In the [End Page 315] mid-1950s, Munsingwear expanded production of menswear with its Penguin line of golf and bowling shirts. The shirts proved popular and were worn by athletes and celebrities. However, despite these successes, Munsingwear’s sales slipped in the 1970s as management struggled to respond to the changing strategies of competitors, such as offshore production and the emphasis on designer branding.

Relying on sparse secondary texts cited in source notes provided at the end of the book, Marks touches on significant historical concerns, such as working conditions, the company’s efforts to fend off labour unions, and changing advertising strategies. For example, Marks describes how local labour activist and journalist Eva McDonald Valesh infiltrated the Northwest Knitting Company factory in 1888 and published an article in the St. Paul Globe about abuses, including the stealing of workers’ lunches by a supervisor, unfair distribution of piece work, and prohibitions against talking, singing, or laughing while working. Marks relates these problems to the nationwide exploitation of garment workers evidenced by the 1909 “Uprising of the 20,000” in New York City and subsequent organizing drives by the nascent International Ladies...

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