Double Two

The company was founded in 1940 by Mr Isaac Donner and Mr Frank Myers to make and sell men’s shirts. However, throughout the war years there was a severe shortage of cotton, and only viscose rayon material was available. The company’s founders considered this fabric too delicate for men’s shirts, but suitable for ladies’ shirts/blouses. Also, they reasoned that while the men were away fighting the war, the women of Britain would be doing the men’s jobs in factories and on farms and would require a more masculine style of shirt/blouse. Therefore this is what they produced and sold during those years.
A small room for a factory was found on the fourth floor of a building in Kirkgate, Wakefield, and over a period of a very few years the partners gradually bought up the whole of the building and developed it into a large shirt-blouse factory.