Maidenform, the underside of glamor - Madame Figaro Icon / Brand / F Plume Close the panel Open the panel Icon / Brand / F Plume

The American shapewear specialist is celebrating its 90th birthday, walking the red carpets and defending a particular vision of corsetry. “99.9% of women wear underwear and 99.8% should wear shapewear. Not because they are not well made but because they could be even better. Maurice Reznik, president of Maidenform, knows how to talk to women. It must be said that the man knows his subject, he who has spent his entire career in lingerie and has been running one of the heavyweights in the sector for four years. His gift of persuasion has also borne fruit since the company has quadrupled its turnover in ten years to reach 600 million dollars in 2011. Of this amount, 40% of sales are provided by shapewear products. , the fastest growing activity.Shapewear? These are all those bras and panties that sculpt the body and which in French are called support lingerie, an anti-glamor expression if there is one. " In the United States, one in four women wears them and the number continues to increase ", says the boss. Even if these underwear are increasingly popular across the Atlantic, Maidenform has neither the sex appeal nor the economic and media recognition of a Victoria's Secret (although it manufactures the Miraculous bra for her). The challenger has therefore started a real business of seduction. When others parade the most spectacular tops on the planet, the New Jersey company has taken an unexpected and ingenious option: the red carpet.

Underwear that lifts spirits

Jewellers and luxury labels have been around for a long time, but no lingerie brand had yet thought of it. The week before the Oscars, for the second consecutive year, the brand rented a suite at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills to receive stars and stylists in search of the ideal bra. Mission accomplished. Blogs and people magazines around the world have thus revealed that Bérénice Bejo, among others, wore a Maidenform Pure Genius under her Elie Saab dress on the day of the Oscars, while for the Golden Globes, a month earlier, under her blue Gucci dress, she had chosen a strapless Custom Lift also stamped Maidenform. This idea of ​​investing Hollywood came from the meeting with Janie Bryant, the famous costume designer of the Mad Men series. For nearly two years, the stylist has been advising Maidenform and acting as ambassadors. " Wearing the right underwear increases self-confidence", insists the young woman with conviction.

This timely collaboration happened by chance while Janie Bryant was writing her book The Fashion File. In the lingerie chapter, she wanted to insert archival photos to explain the evolution of underwear over the past century. “ I remembered that Maidenform was a historic company because an episode of Mad Men was dedicated to it, recalls the young woman. So I called them to get the rights to old photos. They didn't just hand over their archives to her, they also partnered with her. Since then, the costume star has been spreading the good word. She even actively collaborated on the special line published for the 90th anniversary of the brand, which is both glamorous, retro and technical.

No problems, only solutions

The anniversary is an opportunity to recall that Maidenform produced, in 1922, one of the first bralettes with elasticated cups. This small revolution redesigned the female silhouette and introduced the notion of comfort then completely eluded by corsetry. This founding act still guides leaders today. " We have a different positioning from most lingerie brands : the others are aimed at women who want to talk to men, while Maidenform reaches women who think of themselves above all", explains Maurice Reznik. His leitmotif? "Lingerie has to be comfortable to be sexy. In 1949, and for twenty years, Maidenform created the event with advertising campaigns that have remained in the annals. The Dream Campaign presents women in bras in everyday situations (at the office, in stores, etc.) or, on the contrary, in extraordinary situations (in a ring, as Nefertiti, etc.). Beyond its popular advertisements, the brand with hundreds of patents has always wanted to convince its customers with hyper-technical products full of promise: One Fabulous Body ("a fabulous body"), Fat Free Dressing ("0% wardrobe"), Take Inches Off ("centimeters in less"), Instant Slimmer ("Instant slimmer")...

But the collections don't just smooth out the belly, flatter the waist, lift the buttocks or make the cleavage look more plentiful, they also solve more innocuous but very real problems. The slippery strapless bra? Solved thanks to a double self-adhesive strip on the back. The cup that cuts the breast in half? Solved thanks to one centimeter more in height. The push-up that puts the breasts under the chin? Solved thanks to a simple pad that inflates the chest without raising it.

In a country where the majority of women want their lingerie to disappear under their clothes, Maidenform makes one of the best-selling bras in the United States, the One Fabulous Fit. This ideal, invisible T-shirt bra, cut from a revolutionary microfiber that stretches both ways, horizontally and vertically, comes in twenty-five colors and costs $25. "To know us is to adopt us," repeats Maurice Reznik tirelessly. Yet in France, where Playtex and Victoria's Secret are no longer presented, consumers have almost never heard of Maidenform, sold in the catalogs of La Redoute and 3 Suisses as well as on the Maidenform, Amazon and Asos sites. “When they think of lingerie, French women think of seduction. They don't yet fully understand shapewear," explains Maurice Reznik. He does not despair of penetrating the French market where indeed the support lingerie, the girdles and other modeling panties have a really old-fashioned image. This has long been the case in the United States where Maidenform came close to bankruptcy in the late 1990s. Since then, the brand has come back up the slope. In France, all hopes are therefore permitted.