Devil-Dog Dungarees Celebrates 75 Years of Jeans
On Jan. 5 1948, three years after U.S. Marines raised the American flag on Iwo Jima and 21 years after he began manufacturing his apparel line in the Catskills Mountains of New York, Louis Rosenstock, himself a veteran of World War I, launched Devil-Dog Dungarees. Buoyed by the slogan “Tough as a Marine!” the dungarees honored the fortitude and sacrifice of the America’s original armed forces.
“World War II had just ended and everyone was feeling very patriotic,” said Jeff Rosenstock, Devil-Dog Dungarees president and the grandson of the company’s founder. “A pair of jeans stood for durability and comfort and my grandfather wanted to name it after the Marines and the armed forces who fought so bravely in World War II.”
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The term ‘Devil-Dog’ traces its origins to World War I when German forces were recorded as referring to American troops racing up a hill as “Teufel Hunden,” or Devil-Dogs as they were being fired upon by fighters crawling on all fours while wearing masks to protect against mustard gas attacks.
The Marines have worn the nickname proudly ever since, but four years after the launch of the brand, Louis Rosenstock moved the company from New York to Zebulon, N.C., and for reasons Rosenstock isn’t exactly sure of, dungarees disappeared from the Devil-Dog line sometime later that decade.
In 2019, Jeff Rosenstock decided it was time to bring them back as part of a full-scale line complete with shorts, pants, polos, hoodies, crew neck, denim shirts, hats, leather goods, wallets—a “whole men’s lifestyle brand that’s really centered around denim,” Rosenstock said. Nicaragua and Honduras are home to Devil Dog’s near-shored production plants and all of its denim comes from Mexico.
To celebrate its 75th anniversary, Devil-Dog Dungarees is donating $125,000 to the Wounded Warrior Project. In 2021, the company donated $25,000 to the WWP. It also released 75 limited-edition selvedge jeans made with fabric sourced from Louisiana’s Vidalia Mills. The fabric is made on American Draper shuttle looms rescued from the Cone Denim’s shuttered White Oak plant in Greensboro, N.C.
The jeans, which were the brand’s first to be made in the USA in decades, sold out the same day they went live.
To commemorate the brand’s staying power—and perhaps to leave a light on for the return of denim manufacturing to the Carolinas—Rosenstock decided to celebrate 75 years by relighting the iconic neon sign atop the Zebulon headquarters.
“The response has been really incredible across the board,” Rosenstock said. “Customers are drawn to the name for obvious reasons, and some are drawn in through the Wounded Warriors cause, which is an incredible cause, and some people want to give it a shot. A lot of people are discovering us out there on their own and are really enjoying the comfort of the jeans.”
