Two brothers, a tobacco sale and two knitting firms.

Hanes began as two businesses run by two brothers in what is now Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A National Register of Historic Places nomination prepared for the North Carolina Division of Archives and History in 1977 records that Pleasant Henderson Hanes and John Wesley Hanes came to the town of Winston from Davie County in 1872 and, with Major T. J. Brown, set up P. H. Hanes & Co., a tobacco manufacturer, which they sold to R. J. Reynolds in 1900. The brothers then went into textiles separately, each with his own mill.

John Wesley Hanes bought a former tobacco factory in Winston and began knitting socks under the name Shamrock Knitting Mills. English Wikipedia dates the company to 1900; the 1977 nomination says that by 1902 the business was making children’s and men’s cotton socks in the old factory; and a 2004 nomination for the same state office places both Hanes firms in Winston in 1901. The 1977 document records that John Wesley Hanes died in 1903. In 1911 Shamrock built a new mill at Marshall and Second streets, a brick building with a sawtooth roof of north-facing skylights; the nomination says its architect is not known. The firm was renamed Hanes Hosiery Mills Company in 1914, and in 1918 it moved from socks to women’s cotton hosiery, which the nomination says was “offered in black, gray, brown, navy, and bleached white.” By 1926 the company had moved to a larger plant on West 14th Street, and the sawtooth building became a Cadillac dealership. Wikipedia says the old mill was listed on the National Register in 1978 as Shamrock Mills.

Pleasant Hanes’s business, the P. H. Hanes Knitting Company, was organised in 1901, according to the 2004 National Register nomination written by Sherry Joines Wyatt. Its original product was two-piece, winter-weight long underwear for men, sold under other manufacturers’ brand names through a New York jobber, Clift & Goodrich. The nomination lists the colours of that early underwear as black, tans, yellow and blues. In 1913 the company began selling under its own name as Hanes Underwear, starting with a heavyweight union suit and adding a lightweight model in 1919. After 1925, the document says, the line widened to undershirts, woven shorts, knitted sleepwear, briefs, tee shirts and clothing for children and babies.

A merger, Sara Lee, HanesBrands and Gildan.

The two Hanes companies grew side by side in the same town for decades. In February 1965, the 2004 nomination records, P. H. Hanes Knitting merged with Hanes Hosiery to form the Hanes Corporation, and the knitting company soon left its downtown buildings for newer plants. Wikipedia says the corporation became part of Consolidated Foods in 1979, a company later renamed Sara Lee; the clothing business stayed with Sara Lee until 2006, in a group that also owned the cheesecake and bakery brand Sara Lee. Wikipedia dates the women’s line Hanes Her Way to 1985.

In September 2006 Sara Lee spun off its branded clothing business in the Americas and Asia as a separate listed company, HanesBrands Inc., based in Winston-Salem. Wikipedia lists the portfolio at the time as including Hanes alongside Champion, Playtex, Bali and L’eggs. The New York Times reported in July 2013 that HanesBrands had agreed to buy Maidenform Brands, bringing the intimate-apparel label Maidenform into the group.

In August 2025 the Canadian clothing maker Gildan Activewear, headquartered in Montreal, agreed to acquire HanesBrands. The trade publication Apparel Resources reported that the deal was completed on 1 December 2025, and Wikipedia records that HanesBrands shareholders had approved it the previous month, citing the Winston-Salem Journal. Gildan has owned Hanes since 2025; its corporate website now carries the heading “Gildan and HanesBrands” and lists Hanes among its brands next to Maidenform, Bali and Playtex. Apparel Resources described Gildan as a vertically integrated manufacturer with facilities in Central America, the Caribbean, North America and Asia. For Hanes specifically, Wikipedia, citing Salvadoran and regional business reports from 2024, says the company makes fabric at plants in El Salvador, where it has manufactured for decades.

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.

A family name on a label, then on television.

The Hanes identity starts with a surname. Before 1913, the 2004 nomination says, P. H. Hanes Knitting’s underwear went out under other companies’ names; from 1913 it carried the family’s. The same document quotes the original 1913 Hanes label, which promised to stand behind every thread, stitch and button, and to return the money or supply a new garment if a seam broke. The company advertised the new label from the autumn of 1914, the nomination says, and by 1918 it had a sales force and an office in New York. It also describes the Knitting Building of 1920–21, a reinforced-concrete mill with Beaux-Arts detailing whose corner cartouches are marked with large “H” motifs.

Advertising turned the name into slogans. Wikipedia says the women’s hosiery tagline in the 1970s and 1980s was “Gentlemen Prefer Hanes.” The New York Times reported in February 2005 that “Just wait’ll we get our Hanes on you” had run from 1992 to 1999, and that the brand was reviving it that year as “Look who we’ve got our Hanes on now,” with a roster of celebrities — Michael Jordan joined by Damon Wayans, Matthew Perry and Marisa Tomei — in television, print and online work created by the Martin Agency of Richmond, Virginia. The same agency made the 2019 “Every Bod” campaign for Hanes boxer briefs, in which, Marketing Dive reported, men of different builds sing about their underwear as they go about their day, in spots for network and cable television and online.

Both early mill sites are now recognised as history. Wikipedia says the sawtooth Shamrock mill was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and the P. H. Hanes Knitting Company complex in 2005; the 2004 nomination for the latter notes that the complex’s buildings were by then owned by three separate entities.

For a design guide, Hanes shows how a family surname, put on a label in 1913 after years of selling under other firms’ names, can carry a brand through a merger, a food conglomerate, a spin-off and a Canadian owner. Compare it with Maidenform, the intimate-apparel label HanesBrands agreed to buy in 2013, and Champion, the athletic brand that was part of the HanesBrands portfolio at the 2006 spin-off. For this guide we use hosiery navy, label red and bleached white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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