Briefs Coaster

Postcard ispires tighty whities Underwear drawers changed forever in 1934 when Arthur Kneibler, an executive and designer at the Wisconsin hosiery company Coopers, Inc., received a postcard from a friend who was visiting the French Riviera. The postcard depicted a man in a bikini-style bathing suit, and "apparel engineer" Kneibler had an epiphany: couldn't this type of swimsuit be converted into underwear? After some experimentation, Kneibler introduced a new kind of snug, legless underwear with an overlapping Y-front fly. Coopers dubbed the new product "Jockey shorts" because the high level of support the garment offered was reminiscent of jockstraps. Coopers took its first batch of Jockey briefs to Chicago's landmark department store Marshall Fields on January 19, 1935. Although the weather was awful?Chicago was in the grip of a blizzard?the entire load of 600 pairs of Jockeys sold out on the first day. Within three months, the company sold 30,000 pairs of Jockey shorts. Coopers kept making and marketing its wildly successful underwear, and in 1971 the company changed its name to Jockey. Brief history of men's underwear By Ethan Trex, Mental Floss CNN.com