Posted on 07/12/2004 7:02:06 AM PDT by presidio9
Remember the storefront mall displays for Frederick's of Hollywood -- not exactly granny's lingerie? I do, so the "No Kidding" sidebar on the front page of Monday's Press that said engineers from the Army Corps once designed "apparel" for Frederick's was bound to catch my attention.
I had to look it up. What connection could the military have with a teddy, and I don't mean bear?
I didn't find a full explanation, but what surfaced from a little research is that the founder of Frederick's was himself a former soldier. Frederick Mellinger, son of a Hungarian immigrant tailor, once suggested to his superiors at a New York mail-order clothing company that they should start selling ladies' underwear in black, in addition to white.
Depression-era America apparently wasn't ready to go two-color, so Freddy got fired.
He joined the Army, but the wheels of his entrepreneurial mind didn't stop turning. He noticed the pinup girls on the barracks walls and surveyed his buddies; not surprisingly they said yes, they wished their wives and girlfriends would move up from the same old white.
He finished his tour and returned to retail by opening his own clothing store. Applying his informal market research to his line, he sold lingerie in new colors and styles. New York newspapers refused to carry his ads, saying they were too racy.
So Frederick Mellinger moved his shop out West, where he thought his best market would be. In 1947 he traveled to France, saw a bikini for the first time and brought back boxes of the daring new suits to customers who bought him out quickly. Business grew for four decades.
A large part of his success Fortune magazine attributed to his innovations, such as the first padded bra (1947), push-up bra (1948), padded girdle (1951), push-up bikini (1958), and a couple of others in the '80s I shouldn't mention here.
As he continually sought new designs for the emerging American lingerie market, he hired engineers from the Army Corps of Engineers to come up with new ideas. What was implied in the Fortune article, but I couldn't confirm explicitly, was the assumption that these engineers no longer worked for the corps once Mellinger hired them.
In any case, Frederick Mellinger's innovation and entrepreneurial success led to rising stock values and lots of corporate cash, at least until his death in 1990. After that, the company went downhill, especially coupled with the Limited's introduction of Victoria's Secret -- an operation that took the Frederick's concept and softened it to appeal to a broader clientele. In 2000, Frederick's filed for bankruptcy.
So the Army's connection to nighttime "apparel" may not be strong, but it's still fun to think that guy-talk in WWII barracks led to the colorful mainstreaming of what can now be found at the average department store.
ping
what are you wearing...? ; )
I never wear any. Nothing says comfort like an unfurnished basement.
Nice job engineers.
The bullet bra didn't just invent itself.
:O
Victoria's Secret: Respectably naughty for the middle classes.
Frederick's of Hollywood: Lingerie for trashy, fun girls and strippers.
Agent Provocateur: Lingerie for the decadent rich girl.
Dunno where this fits in, but the article reminded me of an incident when I was a civilian programmer for the USMC PX system.
The PX had some pretty savvy auditors and periodically sent them around to the various exchanges. Upon their return, one guy told me of the following mystery:
The Exchange at Quantico, VA had a section for the trooper's wives, including feminine hygiene items. For some reason, medium-sized Kotex pads could not be kept in stock, no matter how often the reorders were placed.
Intrigued, the auditors wondered if someone was siphoning off money or selling the goods on the outside market.
It took them a week to solve it and then only stumbled on it when they had a "coupla beers with the NCOs". It seems that the medium-sized pad, when used as a cleaning patch, perfectly fit the bore of the 105mm howitzer. It held the powder solvent better than the military issue, and with all the artillery training going on, the pads were in high demand.
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