| After a visit to the USA, entrepreneur Ben Sherman was inspired by the smart styling of the Ivy League colleges and began making shirts in Brighton in the early 60s. Success came soon enough as his shirts sold across Europe and the US, and in 1967 a shop, The Jade House, was opened on Brighton's Duke Street.
It didn't take long for the Oxford shirt, complete with a button-down collar, back-pleat and packaged in distinctive black boxes with orange logos, to gain cult status.
Expansion to Carnaby Street soon followed and as demand overwhelmed the original Brighton factory, production was moved to Northern Ireland. Sherman himself sold the company in 1975 and moved to Australia where he lived until his death in 1987.
On the face of it, it's a fairly typical story about a successful clothing business, but, as the exhibition ably demonstrates, it's so much more than that.
As I approached the glass case containing 40 years of Ben Sherman heritage, even the security guard couldn't resist telling me he still had a pair of Ben Sherman desert boots at home.
The brand it seems is not so much about clothes but a way of life, a label, a status symbol that projects an image and tells the world exactly what you're about. |