{"product_id":"bassett-walker-navy-raglan-sweatshirt-made-in-usa-martinsville-virginia","title":"Vintage Bassett-Walker Raglan Sweatshirt Made in USA - Navy","description":"\u003cp\u003eA plain navy \u003cstrong\u003eraglan\u003c\/strong\u003e sweatshirt by \u003cstrong\u003eBassett-Walker\u003c\/strong\u003e of Martinsville, Virginia. \u003cstrong\u003e50% cotton, 50% polyester.\u003c\/strong\u003e Made in USA, labelled S.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMeasured flat: chest 40 in (pit to pit 20 in). Length 22 in.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCondition: great.\u003c\/strong\u003e No holes, no stains, no heavy pilling, and the cuffs and hem still have their spring.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTwenty-two inches on a forty inch chest is short.\u003c\/strong\u003e It sits at the waistband rather than below it - the boxy, square proportion sportswear had before everything was slimmed and lengthened. You cannot get it by buying a size up, because a size up moves every measurement at once.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRaglan sleeves\u003c\/strong\u003e run in one piece from underarm to collar rather than being set into a shoulder seam. There is no seam across the top of the shoulder at all, which is why the shoulder line falls softly instead of squaring off.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMartinsville, Virginia was where America's sweatshirts came from, and two companies did most of it.\u003c\/strong\u003e William Pannill moved there in the mid-1920s and founded Pannill Knitting. He took on a young man called Samuel Walker and taught him the trade; in 1928 Walker started out on his own with Virginia Underwear Corporation, working on second-hand knitting machines, sewing machines and dye tubs bought from a firm that had just gone bankrupt. That company became \u003cstrong\u003eBassett-Walker\u003c\/strong\u003e, and Walker ran it from 1941 until his death in 1960, by which point it was one of the largest makers of knitted outerwear in the country.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePannill's own fleece business took a different road.\u003c\/strong\u003e It was incorporated as Sale Knitting in 1937, renamed \u003cstrong\u003eTultex\u003c\/strong\u003e in 1976, and liquidated in 2000.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnd here is how the two stories end.\u003c\/strong\u003e In 1999, as Tultex went down and 1,100 people in Martinsville lost their jobs, Bassett-Walker's head of human resources said the company might be able to take on a couple of hundred of them. The mentor's firm failed and the protege's firm offered to catch its people. Seventy years after a young man bought a bankrupt company's machines and started knitting.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBassett-Walker was part of VF Corporation by the early 1990s, making fleecewear and T-shirts under the Lee and Riders labels.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIt is a blank.\u003c\/strong\u003e No graphic, no school, no slogan - a navy raglan with nothing printed on it. Fifty-fifty fleece from a Virginia mill, which is a thing that effectively no longer exists: almost every blank sold today is sewn somewhere else entirely.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne of one. Sold as found.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNo returns - as is.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bassett-Walker","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44428823232599,"sku":"MT-TR-197","price":58.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0034\/8692\/files\/IMG_6745.jpg?v=1792533822","url":"https:\/\/shopmille.com\/products\/bassett-walker-navy-raglan-sweatshirt-made-in-usa-martinsville-virginia","provider":"MILLE","version":"1.0","type":"link"}