Montagut

Montagut traces its roots to 1880, when entrepreneur Adolphe Tinland opened a silk mill in the Auzene valley near Saint-Sauveur-de-Montagut in the Ardeche. His descendant Georges Tinland later founded a silk-knitting workshop near Valence, and in 1925 became the first to sell silk stockings under the Montagut name. After the Second World War the company shifted into knitwear, and in 1963 Leo Gros - Tinland's son-in-law - developed a synthetic thread engineered to imitate silk's sheen and drape, which he named Fil Lumiere. Polo shirts knitted from Fil Lumiere became the brand's signature product, popular especially in Asia; by around 2000 Montagut was reportedly the best-known polo-shirt brand in China.