The origin our best known fashion brand names – words Alexa Wang

From the moment that fashion emerged, people wanted to get clothing from their favorite brands and designers. At first, it was very expensive to buy fashionable clothes, but over time, it has become easier to find good brands at affordable prices for everyone.

Now, you can buy clothes and accessories in multiple stores, but also through the internet. In the fashion finder of Fashiola you can see lots of shirts, pants, skirts, t-shirts, dresses and all kinds of footwear from many brands. But how did the fashion brands find their names?

 

Many of the brands we know don’t have a great story or a big mystery about the origins of their fashion brand names. Most of them are named after their founders. An example of this is the brand Chanel, which was founded by haute couture designer Coco Chanel in Paris in 1910. Something similar happened in Florence in 1920, when Guccio Gucci opened a store based on the handcrafted treatment of leather. This small company called Gucci soon achieved success and the quality of its products and materials made it become one of the biggest fashion brands, especially in moccasins, bags, and belts. In Germany, Hugo Ferdinand Boss founded in 1924 his luxury high fashion brand, Hugo Boss.

One of the most well-known brands of sportswear, the German sportsgiant Adidas, dates back to 1920 and its name comes from its founder, Adolf Dassler, dubbed ADI. From the union of his nickname with the first three letters of his surname, he created Adidas. A subsidiary of Adidas, the brand Reebok has a very interesting origin. Joseph William Foster created some of the earliest spiked running shoes, that became very popular. In 1958, two of his grandsons Joe and Jeff Foster founded a company with a name that they found in a South African dictionary that he won in a running race. The name was Reebok, Afrikaans for the grey rhebok, a type of antelope. Another important sports brand is Nike, which received its name from the Greek goddess of victory, although for three years its first name was Blue Ribbons Sports.

Brands like Asos prefer the acronyms. The name comes from ‘As seen on screen’ because the shop emerges online and customers can see the clothes from the screen of their computers. The well-known brand Zara shouldn’t have had that name. Amancio Ortega wanted to call it Zorba, because of the movie of Anthony Quinn, Zorba the Greek. Unfortunately, a coffee shop had already registered the name, reason why he opted for the second option.

More funny and original is the birth of the brand named Ugg. The australian surfers of the 1960s wore leather boots very similar to the ones worn by farmers, known as ugly boots. It was an Australian man called Brian Smith who devised the idea of leather boots to keep warm his feet while surfing. Then it was when ugly boots became Ugg, the name that they currently have.

It’s nice to learn more about the world of fashion and discover that every one of the brands that are present today, have had its history.

The origin our best known fashion brand names – words Alexa Wang