Elliot Gant, Marketer Of The Button-Down Shirt, Dies At 89

Linguists can’t precisely pinpoint when “button-down” was redefined from cutting-edge collegiate to uniformly conformist, but the marketing expertise of the Gantmacher brothers of Brooklyn probably had something to do with it.

Beginning in the late 1940s, Martin and Elliot Gantmacher popularized the button-down shirt as a de rigueur garment for Ivy League and Madison Avenue men. They were so taken with their success, in fact, that not long after their company was rebranded Gant in 1949, the brothers adopted the label as their surname.

Elliot Gant, the last of the founders, died on March 12 in Boston. He was 89. Read more at The New York Times.