Nick Kamen stripped down to them in a launderette for that famous Levi’s ad in the ’80s, Gary Lineker presented Match of the Day wearing some 31 years later, and they put the Nottingham-based company on the map after it introduced them to the UK in the 1940s. But you won’t find a single pair in its spring 2023 catalogue.

Surely, Sunspel hasn’t gone and dropped its boxer shorts?

‘We have different versions of the catalogue,’ assures David Telfer, Sunspel’s creative director. ‘And the one [without the boxers] is mainly used with existing customers, to introduce them to the rest of the range.’

Indeed, if you were still labouring under the impression that the enduring English luxury brand – founded in 1860 – only does underwear, T-shirts and stripy tops, you would be very much mistaken. As a visit to its Old Compton Street shop in London will confirm. Knitted jackets hang by the door, Japanese denim sits in the window and own-brand candles burn away by the tills. Elsewhere, there are wash bags, trainers, cardigans, parkas, belts, caps, wallets and scents. And, yes, rows and rows of the smart boxer shorts in cotton and Sea Island cotton that help make Sunspel’s name.

Turnover at the brand is up 28 per cent year-on-year, which is quite a turnaround from the early 2000s, when it shrank significantly. Today, it has been so successful at extending its product line without diluting its core DNA – 163 years into its existence, lest we forget – that it could be used as a test case by brand consultants.

In fact, it is, as the London-based strategy firm The Brandgym reported in March: “The Sunspel brand rejuvenation: back from the brink”.

‘Every product we introduce, we try to apply our same founding principles,’ says Telfer. ‘Everything we do, we try to do well. Everything we do has to be quality. It all takes a long time to develop. We have a very big quality-control team here and I always say that that’s the most important part of the business. Because without the quality, we don’t really exist.’

A case in point is Sunspel’s new four-piece capsule collection for Mr Porter. It comprises a zip-up jacket, a short-sleeved shirt, a tank top and a camp-collar polo shirt. The tank top and the camp-collar shirt are made with the same warp-knit mesh originally developed in the 1950s for the brand’s Riviera polo shirt, a style later worn by Daniel Craig for his Casino Royale Bond debut. The jacket and the polo shirt are made from long-staple Egyptian cotton. All four items come in two colours – undyed natural ecru and a summery brown. Like most Sunspel products, they look so comfy you want to reach out and stroke them, and they’re designed to be layered.

The Mr Porter collaboration is just the latest in a series that has seen Sunspel develop small, attractive collections with partners like Paul Weller (twice), artist David Shrigley and model Edie Campbell. The fact that the brand can attract this sort of talent speaks to how it has managed to completely reinvent itself to be thoroughly contemporary. It’s a renaissance that received a boost when in 2008, a relatively unknown Northern Irish designer by the name of Jonathan Anderson got in touch and asked if he could have a go at revamping the label; he loved English heritage brands, but Sunspel’s packaging hadn’t changed since the 1970s.

J W Anderson, as he would become, worked with Sunspel for six years while building his own eponymous menswear and womenswear labels, until he had to stop, having been offered the reins as creative director at Loewe. But while there, he helped open a debut retail store in London’s hip Shoreditch for the company in the year of its 150th anniversary (2010), repositioning Sunspel as contemporary and cool while simultaneously playing on its old-school quality credentials (there was lots of nice stuff to stroke).

While fast fashion raged all around it, Sunspel stuck to principles of high-quality fibres and timeless designs. To prove the point, the same spring catalogue that is so devoid of boxer shorts devotes its centre spread to Sunspel’s staff. ‘The expertise and craftsmanship of our factory employees is exceptional,’ it notes. ‘Each T-shirt is quality-checked 15 times.’

‘What might surprise people,’ says Telfer, ‘is that very soft tailoring is doing really well for us. Pieces like unstructured blazers that are slightly smarter but easy to throw on and wear. It’s a level of comfort that all comes from our underwear heritage.’ In other words, the Sunspel boxer short legacy is still strong.

sunspel.com