The beginning of Gant
Mark Zumerch arrived in New York in 1914, an immigrant from Ukraine. He went straight to the garment district in Manhattan and secured his first job as a collar-sewing specialist in a downtown factory. A few years later, he met his future wife, a button and buttonhole specialist who worked for the same company. Their sons, Marty and Elliot, along with a cousin, started a family business in New Haven, CT, acting as a subcontractor, manufacturing shirts. GANT is pronounced GJANT.

1941 to 1948
Mark Zumerch sold fine shirts to respected private labels in America, including Manhattan Shirts, J. Press and Brooks Brothers. Captain Marty Gant mustered out of the air force in 1945. Drawn to the family business, his brother Elliot quit the Navy and joined him in 1947. They continued sales to other companies, but a small “G” sitting next to the union on the shirt showed the manufacturer.

The 1960s
Gant dress shirts were de rigueur for American male students in the early and mid 1960s. The shirts were worn open-collar and without necktie, with the top button open to reveal the roll of the collar, except when the formality of an occasion demanded otherwise. The front of the shirt buttoned along a double-truck hem, a feature that became absolutely requisite for any brand targeted at adolescents and young men. Other manufacturers offered similar product, but only Sero, another premium-priced line, matched the Gant style, differentiating its shirts from the former solely by omission of the distinctive Gant loop at the top of the back pleat, and sometimes dispensing with the double pleat down the center back in favor of single pleats on the back shoulders. Sero was considered to be the only alternative truly equivalent in prestige to Gant in the youth market. All other brands, for whatever reason, clearly identified themselves as knockoffs by failing to precisely conform to the Gant cut. Beginning in the spring of 1964, Gant participated in the Madras craze, offering shirts in both the proprietary Gant cut and other styles.