American Eagle

American Eagle, the Pittsburgh-based retailer formally called American Eagle Outfitters, was founded in 1977 by brothers Jerry and Mark Silverman and is best known for jeans and casual wear for teenagers and young adults. Its place in lingerie history comes from a sub-brand it launched in February 2006: Aerie, a bra, underwear and loungewear label that grew into one of the most visible challengers to the glossy lingerie marketing of the 2000s. American Eagle reported revenue of about $5.26 billion in 2023 and ran 1,182 stores worldwide as of February 2024.

The Silvermans, the Schottensteins and Hot Metal Street

American Eagle began as a subsidiary of Retail Ventures, Inc. The Schottenstein family bought half of the company in 1980 and the rest in 1991, according to English Wikipedia. Through the 1980s and 1990s it became a fixture of American shopping malls, selling denim, polo shirts and outdoor-flavored casual clothes to high school and college students.

Its headquarters sit at SouthSide Works in Pittsburgh's South Side Flats, a neighborhood long tied to the city's steel mills. The company's two buildings carry the addresses 19 and 77 Hot Metal Street, numbers chosen to spell out the founding year. It is a small corporate joke, and a fitting one for a business whose fortunes have always depended on reading young customers.

Aerie, named for an eagle's nest

An aerie, or eyrie, is the nest of an eagle or another bird of prey, which makes the name a neat piece of family branding for an American Eagle offshoot. Aerie launched in February 2006 aimed at girls and young women aged roughly 15 to 22, the same customers who already shopped in American Eagle stores for jeans. The first product mix was intimates and lounge clothes, priced for teenage budgets.

The timing was deliberate. The mid-2000s were the peak of push-up padding, heavy contouring and televised runway shows from Victoria's Secret. Aerie offered softer shapes for a younger customer: the bralette, the lightly lined T-shirt bra, the boyshort and cotton briefs sold in bright multipacks. Over time it moved out of the corner of American Eagle stores into standalone shops, and the product range widened to loungewear and activewear.

Aerie Real and the end of retouching

The decision that made Aerie famous was about photography rather than product. Under the #AerieREAL banner, it stopped retouching the models in its advertising and began presenting what it called "real bodies," with nothing smoothed away in post-production. Wikipedia's account of the campaign uses the company's own phrasing: it promotes models' real bodies and avoids photo manipulation.

That was a commercial bet as much as a statement. Aerie's growth ran in parallel with a shift in what younger customers wanted from intimates, toward comfort, wireless shapes and wider size ranges, and away from the fantasy branding that had dominated the previous decade. The campaign gave American Eagle a clear identity in a category where it had started as a follower. Aerie has its own entry in this encyclopedia; see Aerie for the brand's ranges in detail.

OFFLINE and the athleisure turn

In July 2020 the company added OFFLINE by Aerie, a line of leggings, sports bras and soft workout clothes sold as gear for both exercise and lounging. It arrived as the pandemic emptied malls and moved everyday dressing toward stretch fabrics, and it pushed Aerie further toward an all-day wardrobe rather than an underwear drawer. A sports bra from OFFLINE sits closer to the activewear brands than to a traditional lingerie counter.

The parent company has also bought outside labels. In November 2015 it acquired the menswear brand Todd Snyder and Tailgate Clothing Company, a sign that it intended to be a multi-brand group rather than a single teen retailer.

American Eagle as owner and incubator

American Eagle itself sells mostly denim and casual clothing, with intimates and swim concentrated in Aerie. For an encyclopedia of lingerie, the parent is best understood as the owner and incubator: the company that took a corner of its stores, gave it a bird-of-prey name, and turned it into a separate business that changed how mass-market bras were marketed in the United States. The 1,182 stores counted in early 2024 include both banners, all still run from the two buildings on Hot Metal Street.

Last updated October 7, 2026