Fruit of the Loom Wiki
The origins of Fruit of the Loom date back to 1851 in Rhode Island, the United States, when textile manufacturer Robert Knight and his brother Benjamin co-founded the “B.B. and R. Knight Corporation.” In 1856, the company introduced the brand name “Fruit of the Loom”
A friend of Robert Knight, named Rufus Skeel, had a small store in Providence that sold fabrics from Knight’s mill. Skeel’s daughter painted pictures of apples and applied them to the bolts of fabric.
Those with the apple emblems proved most popular. Knight thought the labels would be the perfect symbol for his Fruit of the Loom trade name. An expression referring to clothing, parallel to the expression “fruit of the womb.”
In 1871, just one year after the first trademark laws were passed by Congress, Knight received trademark number 418 for the mark “Fruit of the Loom. That means Fruit of the Loom is one of the oldest registered trademarks in the world, even older than Coca-Cola and the light bulb.
