Arrow was never merely a brand of shirts. From its earliest days, it functioned as a cultural device—one that translated industrial progress, modern masculinity, and social aspiration into a single garment. To understand Arrow is to understand how the American dress shirt came to represent far more than clothing.
The roots of Arrow lie in Troy, New York, a city whose identity was inseparable from the manufacture of detachable collars and cuffs. Beginning in 1827, the concept of the detachable shirt collar—traditionally attributed to Hannah Montague and later commercialized by Reverend Ebenezer Brown—transformed both domestic labor and menswear. What began as a practical solution to laundering soon became a powerful visual marker of cleanliness, respectability, and discipline.

By the late nineteenth century, Troy’s textile manufacturers accounted for more than 90 percent of all collars and cuffs produced in the United States, earning the city its enduring nickname: “Collar City.” Concentrated along River Street, north of the commercial center and adjacent to the Hudson River, dozens of brick textile mills formed one of the most specialized industrial corridors in American manufacturing history.
It was within this environment that Cluett, Peabody & Company emerged as the dominant force. Originating from earlier firms dating back to 1851, Cluett, Peabody consolidated generations of collar-making expertise and industrial capacity. The company adopted its definitive name in 1899, but its true transformation began in the early twentieth century with the creation of the Arrow brand.

Launched in 1905, Arrow did something unprecedented: it shifted attention away from the detachable collar itself and toward the man who wore it. The Arrow Collar Man, illustrated by J. C. Leyendecker and developed in collaboration with the advertising agency Calkins & Holden, was not a product demonstration but an ideal. Confident yet restrained, modern yet disciplined, he embodied an aspirational masculinity that resonated deeply with American consumers. Shirts and collars were no longer utilitarian necessities—they became symbols of identity.
This symbolic leap proved critical as fashion and society changed. Following the First World War, men increasingly rejected rigid detachable collars in favor of comfort and mobility. By the 1920s, soft, collar-attached shirts had become the norm, and the collar industry that built Troy began to decline. Arrow survived because it adapted—not by abandoning its heritage, but by expanding it.

The technical foundation for this transition was provided by Sanford L. Cluett, who joined the company in 1919. His development of the Sanforized pre-shrinking process dramatically reduced fabric shrinkage after washing, solving one of the greatest shortcomings of early collar-attached shirts. This innovation allowed Arrow to maintain precision, reliability, and consistency at industrial scale, completing its evolution from a collar specialist into a full-fledged shirt manufacturer.
At its height, Cluett, Peabody operated more than a dozen factories across the United States, with Troy remaining its symbolic and industrial heart well into the twentieth century. The company’s River Street facilities—many of which have since been listed on the National Register of Historic Places—stand as physical evidence of Arrow’s central role in American industrial history. These fireproof brick mills, built in Romanesque Revival styles and engineered for mass production, once employed thousands, particularly women, whose labor sustained Troy’s economy for generations.

By the Second World War, Arrow had become the most recognized shirt brand in America, exporting its products worldwide and defining the visual language of modern menswear. In 1955, company sales reached $87.4 million, a staggering figure for the era. Arrow was not simply following American life—it was helping to shape how American men saw themselves.
In the decades that followed, industry consolidation and globalization transformed apparel manufacturing. Production moved beyond Troy, first within the United States and later overseas. Corporate ownership changed hands, and by the early twenty-first century Arrow existed primarily as a licensed brand. Yet unlike many names that faded with the factories that created them, Arrow endured.