History
Helly Juell Hansen had been at sea since the age of 15; in 1877, at the age of 35, he and his wife Maren Margarethe began producing oilskin jackets, trousers, sou'westers and tarpaulins, made from coarse linen soaked in linseed oil. Over the first five years they sold ca. 10,000 pieces.
In 1878 the company won a diploma for excellence at the Paris Expo, and began exporting its products.
After Helly Juell Hansen's death in 1914, company leadership passed on to his son Leiv Helly-Hansen, an experienced merchant.
In the 1920s a new fabric, which Helly Hansen called Linox, was developed. The surface was glossy and attractive – and, best of all, non-sticky. Over the next 30 years the name Linox would transfer to a PVC (polyvinyl chloride) application.
In 1931 another new fabric, Lin-O-Let, was launched. Very thin and light, it could be made in many colors and was used in waterproof leisure and outdoor clothing for women and children.
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“Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.”
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“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)