The story
Ben Davis was founded in 1935 as Ben F. Davis Manufacturing Co. by Ben Davis and his father, Simon Davis in San Francisco, California. The original store was on Valencia Street in the Mission District. The Davis family has been involved in the US garment industry since the mid 1800s. Ben Davis black jeans were popular with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union for their sturdy, rugged, and high quality denim. The longshoremen wore black Ben Davis jeans and white hats in the annual Labor Day parade from the Ferry Building to City Hall in San Francisco. Its clothing would catch on in Los Angeles and other parts of the U.S. The brand was later worn by Chicano, African-American, and Filipino youth. Initially, tags on Ben Davis clothing read "Union Made Plenty Tough"; this was changed to "USA Made Plenty Tough" after a union dispute in 2004, and then to "Est. 1935 Plenty Tough" after certain products began to be sourced from outside the U.S. Co-founder Ben Davis died on February 19, 2009. The company has been run by his son Frank Davis since 1995, who was interviewed in a Grand Royal magazine article. In 2019, Ben Davis collaborated with Supreme to release a fall/winter collection as a tribute to American workwear.
From Wikipedia’s article on Ben Davis (clothing), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4