SWEATSHIRT

The sweatshirt, as everyone knows it today, was born in 1926 in Alabama from an idea by Benjamin Russell Jr., football player and son of the founder of the Russell Manufacturing Company, a company that made women's underwear. Until then athletes had worn stiff sweaters with pungent yarn, but after his son's complaints, in 1930 the American sports uniform finally welcomed the classic " sweatshirt " characterized by breathable cotton and a low neck. round. The new garment was so successful that the company took the name of Russell Athletic and began to specialize in sportswear, while ten years later Champion, a sports company from Rochester, added the hood to the classic sweatshirt silhouette to face the cold of winters New Yorkers. Athletes, workers and even soldiers: the sweatshirt became, within a few decades, the symbol of workwear but also of comfort, enriched with practical details such as the zip and the " kangaroo pocket" on the front.