A New York firm named for its three founders.

BVD takes its name from three surnames. English Wikipedia says the brand was founded in 1876 and named after the last initials of the three founders of a New York City firm: Joseph W. Bradley, Luther C. Voorhees and Lyman H. Day. Japanese Wikipedia gives the same 1876 New York founding and the same three names, citing the Fruit of the Loom BVD website and Francesca Sterlacci and Joanne Arbuckle’s The A to Z of the Fashion Industry (2009). English Wikipedia writes the name as BVD; the Japanese licensee’s website uses full stops, B.V.D., and its trademark notice names The B.V.D. Licensing Corporation as the owner of the registered mark.

The early product line, as English Wikipedia tells it, began with bustles for women before the firm became known for men’s union suits made of heavy knitted fabric. In 1908, Wikipedia says, that bulky, close-fitting garment was reworked into a new kind of loose-fitting underwear, and the company went on to offer a two-piece version and a lightweight, waffle-like fabric. Wikipedia illustrates its history with a BVD advertisement from the June 1915 issue of National Geographic.

The name travelled further than the company. English Wikipedia says the garments are commonly referred to as “BVDs,” and that in certain dialects of Spanish the word bibidí, pronounced like the English initials, is used for a man’s sleeveless undershirt.

Atlas, Superior Mills, Union Underwear and a Japanese licence.

Ownership of the trademark has changed several times. English Wikipedia says that at the beginning of the 1930s BVD was bought by the Atlas Underwear company of Piqua, Ohio, and that during the Depression the brand made swimsuits for men, women and children. Those suits used knits of cotton, wool and rayon, and a patented fabric called Sea Satin, a woven rayon satin backed with latex for stretch; women’s styles ranged from form-fitting maillots to full-skirted suits, and some men’s suits had detachable tops, Wikipedia says. It adds that the Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller, later a screen Tarzan, was hired in 1929 as a model and representative and appeared at swim shows wearing the brand’s swimsuits.

In 1951, according to both English and Japanese Wikipedia, the brand was bought by Superior Mills. Japanese Wikipedia, citing Sterlacci and Arbuckle, says that in the same year the brand began selling underwear packed in plastic bags.

The current American owner traces its hold on the name to 1976. The International Directory of Company Histories, in its entry on Fruit of the Loom, says that in 1976 Union Underwear, the company renamed Fruit of the Loom, Inc. in 1985, acquired the century-old BVD trademark and began to merchandise BVD as a completely separate line of underwear aimed at the more upscale department-store market. Fruit of the Loom later passed to Berkshire Hathaway, which announced on 30 April 2002 that it had completed the purchase of substantially all of Fruit of the Loom’s business operations, following a bankruptcy court’s confirmation of the company’s reorganisation plan, and that Fruit of the Loom, headquartered in Bowling Green, Kentucky, would operate as a wholly owned subsidiary. English Wikipedia lists Fruit of the Loom as BVD’s owner and says the brand is now produced solely for men in the United States.

Japan has its own long line. According to a corporate research report on Fujibo Holdings published by FISCO on 29 November 2022, Fuji Spinning set up Fujibo Apparel in December 1975 and signed a licence agreement with the American B.V.D. in April 1976; the report places B.V.D. within the group’s everyday-clothing business. The Japanese website, bvd.jp, names Fujibo Holdings and Fujibo Apparel and states that B.V.D. products are made under licence from The B.V.D. Licensing Corporation of Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Design and documentation.

Underwear and basics brands in general live on a small set of surfaces. Before a garment is worn, its brand is carried by a box, a sleeve, a multipack bag or a card header on a peg; once it is unwrapped, the name moves to a woven waistband, a printed neck label or a small sewn-in tag; and in a store, a hang-tag or a fixture sign does the work that a shop assistant once did behind the counter.

Each of those surfaces has its own constraints. A waistband has to read in a narrow horizontal band, often repeated around the body, so a name set there tends to be short, wide and simple. A pack has to hold a name, a size and a style at arm’s length on a crowded shelf. A hang-tag sits close to the eye and can carry more words, a fuller logo and a line of copy.

The guides in this group look at those surfaces brand by brand: who started each name, who owns it now, how its labels, packs and advertising have changed, and where independent records and the company’s own account each stand.

Three letters, two markets.

BVD’s identity is the initialism itself. Three surnames from an 1876 New York firm became three letters on a label, then, according to English Wikipedia, a plural noun for the underwear and a Spanish word for an undershirt. English Wikipedia writes the letters run together as BVD, while the Japanese licensee writes B.V.D. throughout its site and in its trademark notice.

Two brand systems now share those letters. In the United States, the International Directory of Company Histories says, Union Underwear positioned BVD from 1976 as a line separate from its Fruit of the Loom underwear, aimed at department stores. In Japan, the B.V.D. website groups its men’s range under names such as B.V.D. GOLD and POWER-ATHLETE, and presents an “ART OF TRUNKS” project, billed as the opening instalment, in which creators from different fields, including illustration, painting and advertising design, designed trunks; the site names them as Asuka Watanabe, Maho Ogawa, Kazuki Umigishi and Hiroyuki Mori. The same site says its bikini collection is made in the company’s own and contracted factories.

Advertising has carried the name since the early twentieth century. English Wikipedia shows a 1915 National Geographic advertisement for the brand and says that during the 1930s its swimsuits featured in major fashion magazines and were sold in high-fashion stores, with Johnny Weissmuller appearing at swim shows on the brand’s behalf.

For a design guide, BVD shows how a partnership’s initials can become a word in their own right, and how one mark can be run by different owners in different markets: Fruit of the Loom in the United States and a Fujibo licence in Japan since April 1976. Compare Fruit of the Loom and Jockey. For this guide we use ink navy, union-suit ecru and gold label with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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