Bernard Gantmacher, a Russian-Jewish immigrant who arrived in New York in 1907, spent years sewing shirt collars in a garment factory (where he met his future wife, buttonhole specialist Rebecca Rose) before the two of them and a partner started the Par-Ex Shirt Company, making shirts for Brooks Brothers, J. Press and Manhattan. After relocating the business to New Haven, Connecticut in 1927, Gantmacher's sons encouraged him to launch a label under his own name, and GANT Inc. began making shirts in 1949. The Yale Co-op was among its first stockists, and the shirts caught on fast enough with Yale students to help define the Ivy League look.