Steve McQueen arrived at Boys Republic as a troubled teenager. Eighty years later, Cluett Peabody's return is supporting the institution that helped shaped his life.
Steve McQueen returns to Boys Republic (1963)
Credit: © John Dominis / Shutterstock
Yesterday evening, beneath a 1963 photograph of Steve McQueen seated among students of Boys Republic, the first shirts from Cluett, Peabody & Co.'s twenty-first-century production were sold at auction.
They disappeared within seconds.
For those attending the annual Steve McQueen Car Show Gala Dinner, it was a fundraising auction in support of a remarkable institution. For us, it marked something rather different: the public return of a company that, for much of the twentieth century, was one of the most important names in American menswear.
A magazine advertisement for Cluett Chesterfield Dress Shirts (c.1900)
Credit: Retro AdArchives
There was a time when Cluett, Peabody & Co. was the largest shirtmaker in the world.
At its peak, the company produced almost 100,000 dozen shirts each week. Its factories employed thousands of workers, its advertising helped shape the image of the modern American man, and its products found their way into wardrobes across the nation.
Today, most people have never heard of it.
Which raises an interesting question: how does a company become one of the defining names of an industry, only to disappear almost entirely from public memory?
The original premises, River Street, Troy, New York (c.1890)
Credit: Cluett, Peabody & Co. Inc.
Founded in Troy, New York, in 1851, Cluett began life making detachable collars. In an era when shirts were laundered infrequently and collars bore the brunt of daily wear, a detachable collar offered a practical solution. Precision, consistency and durability became the hallmarks of the business.
As America grew, so did Cluett.
Corinth, New York (1951). One hundred years after its founding in Troy, Cluett stood at the height of its powers as the world's largest shirtmaker.
Credit: The Corinth Museum
The company expanded into shirts, established manufacturing facilities across the country and evolved alongside a nation that was rapidly discovering its own identity. By the middle of the twentieth century, Cluett had become an industrial giant. Nearly 100,000 dozen shirts left its factories every week — a scale almost impossible to imagine today.
The Cluett collar-turning department, Troy, New York (1933)
Credit: Underwood Archives Inc.
Yet scale alone does not explain why Cluett mattered.
The company flourished during a period in which American dress was undergoing a transformation. The rigid formality of the nineteenth century was gradually giving way to something softer, more practical and more distinctly American. Clothes were no longer designed solely for the office, the club or the drawing room. They were increasingly expected to move effortlessly between work, leisure, travel – and, when required, war.
Manufacturing drab olive flannel shirts for the US Army during WWI
Credit: piemags/NSC
Cluett's products reflected changing habits and its advertising reflected changing aspirations. Over time, the company became associated with a style that was confident without being ostentatious, refined without appearing formal and unmistakably American in character.
J.C. Leyendecker (1874–1951), whose illustrations helped define the image of the modern American gentleman during the first half of the twentieth century.
Credit: photo-fox
Among the commercial artists employed by Cluett was J.C. Leyendecker, whose illustrations remain among the most recognisable images of early twentieth-century America. His work did more than advertise clothing. It captured an ideal. The men he depicted were successful, composed and modern; their clothes mattered, but they were never the whole story. The image was as much about character as appearance.
In many respects, the same could be said of Cluett itself.
One of Leyendecker's illustrations for Cluett (1911). The message remains surprisingly modern: a good shirt should retain its colour, hold its shape and improve with wear.
Credit: adsR
The company was not simply manufacturing shirts. It was participating in a broader conversation about how a man might present himself to the world.
Like many great industrial names, however, Cluett eventually faded from view. The reasons were neither dramatic nor unique. Manufacturing moved, industries consolidated and consumer habits changed. One by one, institutions that had once dominated American production disappeared from the landscape.
Cluett was among them.
The Cluett, Peabody & Co. factory in San Francisco following the earthquake of 1906. Acts of God were not the only challenges the company would face during the twentieth century.
Credit: piemags/rmn
The factories closed. The company receded into history. A name that had once been familiar across the country gradually slipped from public consciousness.
Yet the values that helped build the business never entirely disappeared.
Quality. Durability. Attention to detail. The belief that clothing should improve through wear rather than deteriorate because of it.
These ideas remain every bit as relevant today as they were in 1851. Perhaps more so.
Early Cluett shirt illustration by J.C. Leyendecker (1910)
Credit: Bill Waterson
That, at least, is one reason why Cluett's return feels significant.
Not because the world is short of shirts. It plainly is not. There are countless shirts available at every conceivable price point. What has become rarer is continuity — a genuine connection between a product and the traditions from which it emerged.
The first shirt to emerge from Cluett's new chapter is deliberately uncomplicated: an Oxford Cloth Button Down made from cotton grown, spun, woven and sewn in the United States. There is no attempt to reinvent the category. No unnecessary embellishment. Simply a well-made shirt built upon principles that generations of American shirtmakers would immediately recognise.
The Cluett Oxford Cloth Button Down. From the ground to the collar – grown, spun, woven and made in the USA.
Credit: Cluett, Peabody & Co.
There is, however, another reason why this story matters.
Among the many men associated with the Oxford Cloth Button Down, few remain more enduring than Steve McQueen. The photographs are familiar: a white shirt, a relaxed collar and an effortless confidence that made every garment appear entirely natural. Yet the story that shaped McQueen is less widely known.
Steve McQueen in an Oxford Cloth Button Down. Few men have done more to cement the garment's place in the American wardrobe.
In 1945, he arrived at Boys Republic, a residential community for at-risk youth in California. There he found structure, responsibility and direction at a moment when he needed all three. Long after becoming one of the most recognisable actors in the world, he continued to return — not out of obligation, but gratitude.
Readers interested in that remarkable relationship may enjoy our earlier article, Steve McQueen & Boys Republic, which explores the story in greater detail.
Steve McQueen at Boys Republic (1963)
For the purposes of this article, it is enough to say that some places leave a permanent mark on the people who pass through them.
It is therefore entirely fitting that Cluett's return should begin here.
The first dozen shirts from the new production have been donated to support the organisation that played such an important role in McQueen's life, while a portion of future sales will continue to contribute to Boys Republic and its work.
The Cluett, Peabody & Co. "Steve McQueen | Boys Republic" Oxford Cloth Button Down
The first production shirts will arrive later this year.
That seems entirely appropriate.
After all, this story is larger than a product launch.
It is about continuity.
About preserving a small piece of American industrial history.
About recognising that some ideas remain valuable long after the world has moved on.
And about ensuring that a company founded in 1851 still has a place in the conversation in 2026.
Not because it once mattered.
Because it still can.