Ad Campaign – Hanes Seamless Nylons, 1962

The Perfect Gift!  Irresistible Seamless Nylons * In an Irresistible Christmas Box

I’ve never received hosiery as a gift, but if I did I think I’d feel like all the men and boys over the years who got socks in their Christmas stockings:  let down, disappointed, dejected.  That is, unless they came in this irresistible Christmas box, and in that case, all would be forgiven.

I miss packaging like this.  In 50 years will people look back at ads from 2012 and think they are charming?

Ad Campaign – Hanes, 1972

This is one page of a two-page ad spread from 1972.  The second page is merely the name of the product and a short slogan.  Can you guess what it is?  And yes, it is fashion related.

If no one guesses correctly today, I’ll post the second page of the ad tomorrow.  I’ll give extra credit if you know the brand.

(Don’t try that sneaky hover over the image trick, thinking I might have put the name of the product in the file name.  Another blogger recently had a guessing game and the files had revealing names, and the game was ruined when one poster used that info and pretended to know all the answers.  Not cool…)

Ad Campaign – Hanes Hosiery, 1951

It time for Fashion Week, so follow the fashion leaders…smart coming…and going!

Hanes is one of those old North Carolina companies that seems to have been around forever.  Founded in 1901 in Winston-Salem (a city more famous for tobacco than for textiles) brothers John Wesley Hanes and PH Hanes both started knitting mills in the early years of the 20th century.  John’s factory, Shamrock Mills,  made socks, while broth PH’s plant, PH Hanes Knitting Company,  made cotton knit underwear.  Shamrock was renamed as Hanes Hosiery Mill in 1914, and a few years later they switched from men’s socks to women’s hosiery.  They were an early user of nylon when it was introduced to the market in 1939, and they were quick  to embrace the seamless stocking in the early 1950s.

In 1965 the two companies merged to form Hanes Corporation, and in 1979 the company was bought by Sara Lee.       Before too many years the giant knitting plants in Winston-Salem and across the piedmont of North Carolina were dismantled and sent to Central American countries.  Then in the 2000s, production was moved primarily to China.

Very little Hanes production remains in the US, but they do buy their cotton yarn from Parkdale Mills, which operates around two dozen spinning mills in the South.