Jantzen Brand Guidelines: The Portland Knitting Mill and Its Red Diving Girl

A rowing club, a rib stitch and a change of name.

Jantzen began with sweaters. In January 1910, the Oregon Historical Society’s Oregon History Project says, John and Roy Zehntbauer and Carl C. Jantzen incorporated the Portland Knitting Company in Portland, Oregon. Jantzen, a 1928 regional history says, was born in Denmark and came to Portland with his family as a child. The Smithsonian’s guide to the company’s papers describes the first business as a retail store with “a few knitting machines on the second floor,” making heavy sweaters, woollen hosiery and other clothing.

Swimwear arrived by request. In 1913, the Oregon History Project says, a member of the Portland Rowing Club ordered rowing trunks in the rib stitch used on sweater cuffs, believing it would do away with a drawstring. Other members ordered the same, then one asked for a bathing suit. The partners worked to make the fabric light enough to swim in, and added an elastic-stitch suit to their line.

The engineering is credited to Jantzen himself. The Smithsonian guide says he developed an automated circular knitting machine, derived from hosiery machines, with a fine needle-bed that produced the light material swimsuits needed and cut the cost of knitting dramatically. A patent for the elastic rib-stitch suit was granted in 1921, it says. Contemporary Fashion describes the suit as a one-piece in an elasticised rib stitch that dropped the extra yardage of the Edwardian bathing costume.

The name came next. The Smithsonian guide says the company first used Jantzen as a trademark in advertising in 1916 and changed its name officially to Jantzen Knitting Mills in 1918; the Oregon Historical Society also gives 1918, while Contemporary Fashion gives 1916 for the renaming. The 1928 history, Fred Lockley’s History of the Columbia River Valley, says the name was chosen as a tribute to the man mainly responsible for the design, quality and manufacture of the product. It also records a new plant on Sandy Boulevard in Portland, built in 1919 and doubled in January 1924.

A diver on a windshield.

Contemporary Fashion calls the emblem one of the first memorable apparel logos. The Red Diving Girl first appeared in Jantzen’s catalogues in 1920, the Oregon History Project says. The Transatlantic Journal credits the design to the artists Frank and Florenz Clark. She was a diver in a red suit and knitted cap, drawn in mid-plunge.

A windshield sticker spread her. The Oregon History Project says the company began handing out cut-outs after hearing of a young man in rural Oregon who had covered his father’s car with images from the 1922 catalogue. The Smithsonian guide quotes a 1923 issue of Men’s Wear N.Y. reporting that the sticker was “proving popular with auto-drivers,” with “many windshields” carrying “as many as 3 or 4 of the figure.” Lockley wrote in 1928 that many millions had been stuck on cars. Jantzen’s own history says Boston reportedly banned the decals in 1924 because drivers were too distracted. By the Oregon History Project’s account, the fad weakened later in the decade, but a trade market survey in 1931 ranked the emblem as the seventh best known pictorial trade mark in the United States.

Contemporary Fashion says she was embroidered or sewn on Jantzen swimsuits for over 60 years. She also changed with the clothes. The Vintage Fashion Guild, which uses the emblem to date garments, says she gained her cap and stockings in the mid-1920s, lost the stripes on the legs and became more streamlined in the 1930s and 1940s, and had a strapless suit by 1948.

Around her the company built a long advertising programme. National advertisements in Life and Vogue began in 1921, and the slogan “the Suit that Changed Bathing to Swimming” became one of the longest used, the Smithsonian guide says; Jantzen’s own history dates the line to 1923. Billboards carried work by George Petty and McClelland Barclay, and the company names Alberto Vargas among its illustrators. Its house magazine, Jantzen Yarns, had covers by Petty, Jon Whitcomb, Pete Hawley and René Gruau, according to the Smithsonian. By the 1930s, the Oregon Historical Society says, it was photographing film stars such as Ginger Rogers and Johnny Weissmuller in its products.

Colour was part of the system. Contemporary Fashion and Lockley both record the “Jantzen Color Harmony Guide” by the colour authority Hazel Adler, issued as an aid to buyers in the 1920s. Jantzen also promoted the activity it depended on: Contemporary Fashion describes its “Learn to Swim” campaigns, and the company says it launched the Jantzen Swimming Association of America in 1926.

How swim labels present themselves.

Swimwear and resort labels sell a place as much as a garment, so their visual identity tends to start with the setting. Seafolly’s website speaks of Bondi Beach and the Australian beach lifestyle; Vilebrequin’s speaks of Saint-Tropez in 1971. For a designer, the useful question is how that place is carried through photographs, shop interiors and the small printed items around a sale.

The printed fabric is the first thing to study. In this category a swatch can work like a logo: Vilebrequin’s chief executive told The Week in 2017 that it made a sea-turtle print every year in a different colour, and its website describes lining up a back pocket by hand so the pattern runs across it. A print archive, where a label keeps one, gives it a repeatable source of colour and motif from year to year.

Lookbooks then supply the setting. Beach huts, pool edges, towels and harbour walls appear often in this kind of photography, and they do the job a product shot cannot, by showing the clothes in the place they are meant for. Collection names often work the same way: Ragtrader’s report on Seafolly’s summer 2020 range lists names such as Summer Memoirs and Check In, each tied to a print.

Boutique displays and packaging finish the picture. A stack of folded prints reads as a colour field; a swing tag, box or pouch carries the mark away from the shop. Each brand in this guide sets out who founded it, who owns it now and what it says about where its goods are made, and marks what rests on the company’s own word. The palettes here are our own interpretations, not official colours.

Mills, a war and a chain of owners.

Jantzen went abroad early. The Smithsonian guide says that before its peak year of 1930 the firm had factories in Canada, England and Australia, and exported to many countries in Europe and South America and to the Philippines. After the Depression years of 1931 to 1934 it chose to license companies in Europe rather than operate there, a decision based on the uncertainty of US foreign-trade rules and on what Zehntbauer had seen of political changes on a trip to Europe. In 1936 it opened a new spinning mill and, the same guide says, hired its first female designer.

The Second World War interrupted the swimwear business. Jantzen’s own history says the company temporarily shifted production to the war effort, making military goods such as sweaters, sleeping bags and parachute bags. The Transatlantic Journal gave a longer list in January 2026: sweaters and swim trunks for servicemen, sleeping bags, gas mask carriers and parachutes. Afterwards the company returned to swimwear with nylon and other new materials, and the Vintage Fashion Guild records collections by the California designer Louella Ballerino in the mid and late 1940s.

A 1952 film, “Suited for Swimming!”, held by the Smithsonian, describes the making of swimsuits at the Portland plant. The company became Jantzen, Inc. in 1954, according to the Smithsonian and the Oregon Historical Society; Contemporary Fashion says 1949. Jantzen’s history says its International Set of 1956 drew on eighteen design studios around the world. By 1973 it had 4,500 employees, the Smithsonian says.

Then came a chain of owners. Blue Bell, the North Carolina company, bought Jantzen in 1980, says the Oregon Historical Society, while Contemporary Fashion says 1979; Blue Bell became part of VF Corporation in 1986. Contemporary Fashion records that Jantzen began designing and making Nike swimwear in 1995, cut jobs, moved some production to Latin America and the Caribbean, and dropped its sportswear collection in 1999. In 2002 Perry Ellis International bought the brand, the Oregon Historical Society says.

In 2019 the brand was bought by Jantzen Brands Corporation, which says so on its website. It describes itself as headquartered in Commerce, California, handling design, global sourcing, production, marketing and distribution, and lists Cosita Linda, COVA and Phax among its other brands. It says Jantzen now covers women’s swimwear, sweaters and loungewear, and is distributed across the United States, South America, Canada and Europe. Jantzen’s own website promotes a Diving Girls Club and a decade-by-decade history.

Company papers are held at the Oregon Historical Society and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

For a design guide, Jantzen shows how a small emblem, handed out free, can become the mark a company is known for. Compare Speedo, another swimwear name that began in a mill, and TYR, the Huntington Beach swim brand. For this guide we use a decal red, a river ink and a teal with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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