A Minneapolis underwear maker’s golf shirt.

Original Penguin began as a shirt, not a company. Its maker was Munsingwear of Minneapolis, whose roots English Wikipedia traces to 1886, when George D. Munsing came to Minnesota from New York with Frank H. Page and Edward O. Tuttle to set up a textile mill. Citing the International Directory of Company Histories, it says the business was incorporated as the Northwestern Knitting Company in February 1887 and was known for union suits, the one-piece knitted underwear of the period. The company went public and took the name Munsingwear, Inc. in 1923, and in 1951 it merged with the Vassar Swiss Underwear Company of Chicago, which became its Vassar division.

The golf shirt came in 1955. English Wikipedia, citing Susan Marks’s history In the Mood for Munsingwear, published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press in 2011, says Munsingwear began producing its Grand Slam golf shirt that year, carrying a penguin logo. Writing in Global Golf Post in August 2025, John Steinbreder described the shirts of 1955 as having three buttons at the placket, an “action gusset” to let the wearer swing freely, and the penguin embroidered on the chest pocket.

The same article names some of the people who wore them: the PGA Tour players Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Jackie Burke, and the entertainers Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Clint Eastwood. The penguin itself acquired a name, Pete, which the company still uses for its mascot; in 2025 its owner marked the bird’s 70th birthday.

From Munsingwear to Perry Ellis.

Munsingwear’s own fortunes did not last. English Wikipedia records that the company filed for Chapter 11 reorganisation in 1991, and that the Minnesota Historical Society holds more than 3,500 Munsingwear pieces, donated when the company shut its North Minneapolis factory.

The penguin changed hands in 1996. In its annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended January 1997, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in April 1997, the company said that on 6 September 1996 it had sold all its rights to its remaining trademarks, with certain associated assets, to Supreme International Corporation. The same day it changed its own name to PremiumWear, Inc., and it went on making clothing under the Munsingwear name as a licensee of Supreme.

Supreme International was the Miami apparel company founded by George Feldenkreis. According to English Wikipedia, citing the company’s own history, Supreme acquired the Perry Ellis brand in 1999 and renamed itself Perry Ellis International. The penguin marks therefore belong to the same group as the Perry Ellis name itself, and the group has owned them since 1996. Its headquarters are in Doral, in the Miami area, according to English Wikipedia.

Perry Ellis International was listed on Nasdaq until 2018, when George Feldenkreis took it private. FashionUnited reported that its shares ceased trading before the market opened on 22 October 2018, and that his son Oscar Feldenkreis continued as chief executive. In January 2025 Golf Retailing described Original Penguin as “a division of Perry Ellis International,” and quoted Oscar Feldenkreis as the group’s chief executive.

Golf clubs and golf clothing.

The seven brands in this group are all golf names: Sligo, Adams Golf, Scratch Golf, Wishon, Nike Golf, KJUS and Original Penguin. Golf brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from small workshops that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger sporting-goods or apparel groups, and a single name can appear everywhere from a club pro shop to a department-store rail.

A golf brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single club or shirt than by a mark, a name and the game it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or narrowed or widened what it sells. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its clubs or clothing are actually made.

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

Pete the Penguin, relaunched in 2003.

Under its new owner the penguin returned as a brand of its own. The Orange County Business Journal reported in November 2005 that Perry Ellis relaunched the Original Penguin name in 2003, kept the “tuxedoed penguin icon the same,” and widened the range to women’s clothing and shoes under Chris Kolbe, formerly a men’s merchandising manager at Urban Outfitters. FashionUnited, reporting in May 2004 with Kolbe as vice-president of marketing, said he had learned the trade at Polo Ralph Lauren and had been running the label for two years; it described the brand’s print advertising as “witty” and a first freestanding shop in midtown Manhattan, by Bryant Park, furnished with Hans Wegner and George Nelson pieces, with stockists including Barneys and Fred Segal in the US and Harvey Nichols and Selfridges in Britain. English Wikipedia gives the brand’s headquarters as New York City.

The golf line has stayed at the centre of the brand. Golf Retailing reported in January 2025 that Original Penguin would exhibit its summer and fall collections “for golf and racquet sports” at the PGA Show in Orlando, using the visit to celebrate Pete’s 70th birthday. Global Golf Post wrote in 2025 that many younger buyers had found the brand after the Australian professional Cameron Smith began wearing it in 2018. In May 2025 FashionUnited reported a 70th-anniversary capsule from Perry Ellis International, drawing on the brand’s mid-century archive and inspired by the original Earl Polo, in bright colourways and varied textures.

The visual identity is easy to describe because it rests on one figure: a small penguin, embroidered on the chest, the mark the 2005 report says Perry Ellis chose not to change. The company does not publish an official colour code or typeface for it, so the palette here is our own reading of a black-and-white bird.

For a design guide, Original Penguin shows how a single embroidered mascot can carry a name across owners, decades and markets, from a Minneapolis underwear maker’s golf shirt to a fashion label sold in its own shops. Compare KJUS, a golf and ski clothing label, and Sligo, another golf apparel name. For this guide we use tuxedo black, white, a beak orange and a navy with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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