designer items
designer-items.Com

The origins of this storied British brand are as interesting as the clothing that they make. The original Henri after who the company was named was a Pole called Henri Strzelecki who moved to Manchester, England and settled there after serving in the Polish army in the Second World War. He adopted the more pronounceable last name of Lloyd and studied textiles and fabrics and worked with the local clothing companies that Manchester had at the time.

Henri Lloyd's interest in sailing and yachting led him to make a number of innovations in the world of yachting clothing that had been quite unchanged for decades and even centuries before he came on the scene. Today a lot of innovations that we take for granted were originally thought up by Mr Lloyd himself and applied to high performance clothing.

He was the first person to start using a new man made fabric called Nylon in clothing and combine it with water proof enclosures and other innovations at the time like velcro to bring yachting and sailing clothing into the twentieth century. Other innovations like hand taped seams and corrosion resistant zippers made out of nylon were also the products of Mr Lloyd's fertile brain.

Lloyd's clothing range really gained world wide popularity respect and recognition for the first time in the years 1966 and then a decade or so later when two famous explorers, both of whom are now British Knights and one is still a living legend first used his clothing. In 1966, Sir Francis Chichester was the first man to circumnavigate the globe and his clothing of choice for this ground breaking and history making journey was clothing by Henri Lloyd. More than a decade later an equally intrepid Brit, Sir Ranulph Fiennes known now as the world's greatest ever explorer led a group of explorers called the Transglobe Expedition in what was the first round the world journey via the poles. Sir Fiennes and his entire team all wore Henri Lloyd's foul weather gear for the entire journey.

Nearly a decade later the Lloyd brand once again came into the limelight but this time for its style rather than its well proven endurance. The Milan Scooter Society adopted a piece of clothing from the line called the Henri Lloyd Consort Original sailing jacket to be part of their uniform along with a pair of Levi's 501 jeans. The sales of this clothing item went through the roof as young men around the European continent flocked to the stores to purchase the jacket in an effort to look cool. For many years the Lloyd sailing jacket remained the definitive clothing of choice for young and hip Italians.

Tags:  origins british brand company lloyd sailing yachting innovations fabric clothing