Jockeying for market share
There ain’t no party like a ‘no squirm party’ when Y-fronts for blokes came to town.
William Wilson, 29, secretary of the Band of Friendship Oddfellows, was found dead at the bottom of a well. There was no mention of his underwear. Also in the news that day, a covered lookout was opened at the top of Mt Victoria in Wellington, while in Christchurch the De Luxe Skating Rink in Kilmore St had a new floor being laid. But still no mention of underwear.
Yet it was that day – March 16, 1940, 76 years ago this week – Jockey Y-front underwear went on sale in New Zealand.
One advertisement promised: ‘‘Quit squirming, Change to jockey.’’
‘‘Bunching, binding underwear’s got him in its grip . . . aggravating the crutch . . . trying the temper. But waste no pity.
‘‘There’s an easy end to all this misery.’’
That misery in New Zealand, according to Richard Wolfe in The Way We Wore, had been men’s underwear that was an ‘‘all wool and all enveloping’’ arrangement.
‘‘Made locally, it featured heavy ribbing and reinforced crotches, and came mostly in natural or fawn colours.
‘‘For the patriotic there was Roslyn’s Dominion brand, with ‘spliced seat and knee’.’’
According to Jockey’s own history, the company – originally S.T. Cooper & Sons and started by Samuel Thrall Cooper in the United States – started in 1876.
It was decades later, in 1934, that the company’s head of marketing and sales, Arthur Kneibler, got a postcard from the French Riviera that would literally change the shape of underwear.
That postcard featured a man wearing a ‘‘bikini style swimsuit’’.
‘‘A light went off in his head. Kneibler saw not a swimsuit, but underwear for the common man. Kneibler had been pondering something new and innovative in underwear, and this postcard was the inspiration.’’
Hence the Jockey brief was born, followed the next year by the Y-front, which soon became the company’s biggest seller.
Canterbury company Lane Walker Rudkin bid for a licence to manufacture the new style, with a marketing campaign that kicked off on March 16, 1940, nzhistory.net.nz says.
New Zealand at that moment became just the fourth company in the world to sell the brand.
‘‘These were heady days. Economic depression had been replaced by World War and the country was in the grip of centennial fever,’’ the government history website notes.
The advertising campaign was wide-reaching and – for the time – racy as the skimpy underwear themselves.
‘‘Streamlined, twins-to-your-skin that bring you comfort where you need it most,’’ one newspaper advertisement stated.
‘‘Exclusive Y-front feature gives mild support, waist-anchored and adjustable.
‘‘Convenient angled no-gap opening eliminates undesirable body contacts with outer clothing.’’
Then, ever-so suggestively: ‘‘Masculine cut fits you everywhere.’’
Jockey would go on to rule the New Zealand underwear competition, nzhistory.net.nz says.
During 2003, New Zealanders bought nearly 1 million pairs of men’s Jockey underwear – one for every 11⁄ men older than 15.
Over the years, sporting stars including Chris Cairns, Danny Morrison, Zinzan Brooke, Paul MacDonald, Ian Ferguson and Matthew Ridge posed for the camera in Jockeys.
In 2004, All Black Dan Carter became the face – and body – for the brand.
‘‘I suppose I appeal because I’m a sportsman and people look up to them,’’ he said at the time.
‘‘With the women, I don’t really know . . . hopefully.’’
Pulses raced as 16-metre-high billboards of the All Black in his Jockeys were slapped up around New Zealand.
While it was reported that the big buyers were women snapping them up for their partners, Carter remembered his first pair.
‘‘I was a bit of a young fella when my mum-bought me my first pair of Jockeys, so I guess you could say I’ve been wearing them all my life.’’
The advertising was brash and bold. The photos, crisp and large, left little to the imagination.
But they lacked the panache of the copy-writing genius who, in 1940, came up with possibly the strangest line in advertising history: ‘‘Come and join the no squirm party.’’
‘‘I was a bit of a young fella when my mum bought me my first pair of Jockeys, so I guess you could say I’ve been wearing them all my life.’’ Dan Carter