Raleigh, 2001, and a name found on a lawn bowl.

Peter Millar began in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 2001. English Wikipedia names three founders — Chris Knott, Greg Oakley and Chet Sikorski — and the National Golf Foundation’s company profile gives the same three names. Knott is the founder whose story is told most often. Walter, the Raleigh magazine, described him in 2013 as a native of Fuquay-Varina who had spent close to two decades representing high-end menswear labels, among them Hugo Boss, Joseph Abboud and Burberry, before he started the business as a sideline, hoping to earn some extra income for his family.

The first product was a sweater. Walter reported that Knott saw room in the market for brightly coloured cashmere sweaters at a fair price, and that golf shirts followed soon after; the NGF profile likewise says the company began with a single cashmere sweater.

The name came from a lawn bowl. Knott wanted something that sounded aristocratic, Walter reported, and found it on an old leather lawn bowling ball that had belonged to his mother. The NGF profile also traces the name to an inscription on a vintage lawn bowling ball.

Ownership changed early. In 2005 Scott Mahoney and the Sea Island Company bought Peter Millar, with Mahoney named chief executive, English Wikipedia says; Walter notes that Mahoney came from Polo’s golf and tennis business. In 2009 the Chicago private equity firm Winona Capital Management bought a majority interest from Sea Island. In 2011 the company moved its design and marketing headquarters to Raleigh and opened a warehouse and offices in Durham, and the same year it opened its first company-owned store, in Southampton, New York, followed by one on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach.

Richemont since 2012.

On 21 September 2012, Richemont, the Swiss luxury group, announced that it would acquire Peter Millar LLC from Winona Capital in a private transaction, with completion expected in October 2012. The release, issued from Geneva, Chicago and Raleigh, called Peter Millar a US-based, international luxury apparel business and placed its studio and design centre in Raleigh and its business operations in Durham. Mahoney said in the release that partnering with Richemont was “a wonderful opportunity” for the brand. Richemont’s own list of its maisons still includes Peter Millar, under fashion and accessories, so Richemont has owned the brand since 2012.

Inside that group Peter Millar sits alongside names such as Cartier, Montblanc and Alfred Dunhill, as the NGF profile points out. Walter, writing a year after the deal, described the design team at work in a converted cotton mill behind Peace College in Raleigh, and a warehouse in Durham where embroiderers add golf clubs’ own emblems to shirts — the feathered headdress of Shinnecock Hills among them.

The shops multiplied. English Wikipedia lists a store at 536 Madison Avenue in New York from late 2014, then openings including North Hills in Raleigh in September 2015, Atlanta in 2016, Dallas and Brentwood in 2017, Boston and Charlotte in 2018, and Newport Beach and Chicago in 2019, some of them with local clothiers as partners. In March 2015 Knott announced his retirement, and Jason Cater joined as vice-president of design and merchandising.

In January 2018 Peter Millar bought G/FORE, the Los Angeles golf sportswear and accessories brand, a deal WWD reported under a headline naming the designer Mossimo Giannulli as G/FORE’s founder. Richemont now lists G/FORE as a maison of its own, and its site carries an announcement naming Scott Ruerup, earlier Peter Millar’s president of retail according to English Wikipedia, as G/FORE’s chief executive.

The range has spread well beyond golf. The NGF profile lists the labels Crown, Crown Crafted and Crown Sport alongside Peter Millar womenswear, and describes performance sportswear, tailored clothing, footwear and accessories. Tailoring came early: in 2007 Peter Millar licensed its tailored clothing line to Empire Clothing of Canada for manufacture and distribution, English Wikipedia says, citing WWD, and in 2013 Walter mentioned a tailored line called Pick Stitch.

Golf clothing as a brand business.

The seven brands in this group are all golf clothing names: Peter Millar, TravisMathew, Greyson, Holderness & Bourne, J.Lindeberg, Galvin Green and Linksoul. Five are American and two, J.Lindeberg and Galvin Green, are Swedish. Golf apparel brands sit at many different points in the trade, from founder-run labels that still carry a founder’s name or story to brands that now belong to larger golf, fashion or investment groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a club’s pro shop to a city department store.

A golf clothing brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single garment than by a name, a small logo on a chest or a cap, and the kind of player it promises to dress, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its design studio or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its clothing is designed and made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its clothing is made and how its marks have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A borrowed name, worn on the course and off it.

The name was chosen, as Walter told it, because it sounded aristocratic, and the labels the NGF profile lists carry the word Crown: Crown, Crown Crafted and Crown Sport. Walter’s 2013 visit to the Durham warehouse described embroiderers adding golf clubs’ own emblems to Peter Millar shirts as orders went out.

The brand has also been seen at team events: the NGF profile lists Peter Millar among the brands seen on United States Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup teams and names tour players including Kevin Kisner, Cameron Young, Ryan Fox and Brandt Snedeker. On where the clothes are made, Walter reported in 2013 that garments arrived at the Durham warehouse from places such as Peru, China and Italy.

For a design guide, Peter Millar shows how a label can borrow an old-world name and build a club-like identity around it. Compare G/FORE, the Los Angeles brand Peter Millar bought in 2018, and TravisMathew, a Southern California golf label with a looser register. For this guide we use navy, sage and a cashmere cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Peter Millar’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.