Lonsdale is a clothing company founded in London, England in 1960, producing boxing equipment before branching out into sports and fashion clothing. As of 2007, it is a division of Sports Direct.
History
The company is named after Hugh Cecil Lowther, fifth Earl of Lonsdale, who organised boxing matches in 1909 and who was president of the National Sporting Club of Britain. Every boxer who became a champion and defended his title successfully three times received the Lonsdale belt. Bernard Hart, an ex-boxer, visited the Lord in the 1960s and asked for permission to use his name for a clothing brand targeted towards boxers. Lonsdale articles have been worn by many famous boxers, including Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Henry Cooper and Lennox Lewis.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Lonsdale clothing became popular among skinheads and mod revivalists. Paul Weller of the band The Jam was a particularly high-profile aficionado.
Mike Ashley took over the company in 2003. Lonsdale sponsored Blackburn Rovers Football Club during the 2005-06 season. As of 2007, a division of Lonsdale produces football kits for Brentford, Swindon Town and Millwall. In 2008 Lonsdale are the official clothing suppliers to the Sydney Roosters Rugby League club in Australia.
Controversy and reaction
In the Netherlands, Belgium, northern France and Germany, the term Lonsdale youth became widely used to describe teenagers with far right tendencies, sometimes associated with the gabber subculture. Some European right-wing extremists have worn tops bearing the Lonsdale logo, allegedly because a carefully placed outer jacket can leave only the letters NSDA showing; an acronym of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter (National Socialist German Worker) and one letter short of NSDAP, the German acronym for the Nazi Party.[1][2] Because of this, certain schools in the Netherlands have forbidden their students to wear Lonsdale clothing to school.[3][4]
Lonsdale reacted to this development by sponsoring anti-racist events and campaigns, and by refusing to deliver products to known neo-Nazi retailers. In 2003, the "Lonsdale Loves All Colours" campaign was launched, emphasizing non-white fashion models. Subsequently, the popularity of Lonsdale clothing among the far right has dropped.
