Hugo Boss started his clothing company in 1924 in Metzingen, a small
town south of Stuttgart, where it is still based. However, due to the
economic climate in Germany at the time Boss was forced into bankruptcy.
In 1931 he reached an agreement with his creditors, leaving him with 6
sewing machines t
o start again.The same year, he became a member of the
Nazi party and a sponsoring member (“Fördernde Mitglieder”) of the SS.
He later stated himself that he had joined the party because of their
promise to end unemployment and because he felt “temporarily” withdrawn
from the Evangelic church.
Hugo Boss sales increased from 38,260 RM in 1932 to to over 3,300,000
RM in 1941, while his profits increased in the same period from 5,000
RM to 241,000 RM.Though he claimed in a 1934/1935 advertising he had been a “supplier
for Nazi uniforms since 1924″, such supplies are probable since
1928/1929 and certain since 1934, when he became an RZM-licensed
(official) supplier of uniforms to the SA, SS, Hitler Youth, NSKK and
other Party organizations.
To meet demand in later years of the war, Boss used about 30 to 40 prisoners of war and about 150 forced laborers, from the Baltic States, Belgium, France, Italy, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union.
According to German historian Henning Kober, the company managers
were “avowed nazis”, “the Boss were all great admirers of Adolf Hitler”
and Hugo Boss had in 1945 in his apartment a photograph of himself with
Hitler taken in the latter’s Ob
ersalzberg retreat.
In a 1946 denazification judgement, based on his early party membership, his
financial support of the SS and the uniforms delivered to the Nazi party even
before 1933, Boss was considered both an “activist” and a “supporter and
beneficiary of National Socialism”. He was stripped of his voting rights, his
capacity to run a business and fined “a very heavy penalty” of 100,000 marks.
He died in 1948 but his business survived.
After Hugo Boss’s death, the factory returned to making uniforms for postal and
police workers. It produced its first men’s suits in the 1950′s, but did not
focus exclusively on men’s fashion until the early 1970′s.
In 1999, American lawyers filed lawsuits in New Jersey, on behalf of
survivors or their families, for the use of forced workers during the war.
The company did not comment on these law suits but reiterated an earlier
statement that it would “not close its eyes to the past but rather deal with
the issues in an open and forthright manner”. It sponsored a research by German
historian Elisabeth Timm. Nevertheless, after Timm told the press of her
findings, the company declined to publish them.
A majority of the company stock was sold to the Italian group Marzotto in
1993.