Chantal Thomass

Chantal Thomass is a Paris lingerie house founded in 1975 by the designer of the same name, Chantal Thomass, born Chantal Genty in Malakoff in 1947. It made stockings, garter belts, corsets and bows fashionable again in the late 1970s and 1980s, and its boutique at 211 rue Saint-Honoré remains one of the best-known lingerie shops in Paris.

The brand and the woman have not always been the same thing. Thomass lost control of her own name for several years, and the label has changed owners four times. Its history is one of the clearest cases in French fashion of a designer's identity being treated as a tradeable asset.

Ter et Bantine and the move into lingerie

Before lingerie, there was ready-to-wear. From 1967 Thomass and her husband, Bruce Thomass, ran a young Paris label called Ter et Bantine, whose customers included Brigitte Bardot. The clothes were playful and short-lived in the way boutique fashion of that decade was.

In 1975 she set up her own company and began designing lingerie, with a first collection following the next year. The timing was deliberately contrary. French women of the post-1968 generation were burning, or at least abandoning, the structured underwear their mothers wore. Thomass went the other way and brought back the bra, the basque, the corset bra, the garter belt and the seamed stocking, cut in silk with frills and bows. She is also credited with inventing lace tights.

Lingerie shown as fashion

Her runway shows put lingerie in front of the fashion press as a collection in its own right, and French sources describe her as the first designer to present women in lingerie on the catwalk. Whatever the exact precedence, her shows of the late 1970s and 1980s made underwear a fashion subject in Paris years before Jean Paul Gaultier and others made corsetry into outerwear. Her taste for Calais lace, reworked into bold modern guipure motifs, became a signature.

The French state took note. Thomass was made a member of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1986 and received the insignia of the National Order of Merit in 2005.

Bankruptcy, Japanese owners and a lost name

The business side was rougher. The company went bankrupt in 1985 and was rescued with capital from the Japanese World group. In 1995 the Japanese shareholders, who controlled the trademark, dismissed Thomass for what they called serious misconduct. She could no longer sell under her own name.

After about three years of legal dispute, she recovered the use of the brand in 1998 by bringing it into Sara Lee, then the owner of the French hosiery and underwear giant Dim. Under that deal she kept a minority stake, reported at 34 percent, and stayed on as artistic director. She later told the story of these years in an autobiography published in 2017.

The rue Saint-Honoré boutique

The current flagship at 211 rue Saint-Honoré, in the first arrondissement, opened in 2004. It is decorated as a boudoir in pink, black and white, with baroque furniture, and its window displays have long been a stop for photographers and tourists. The shop sells the full collection, including the stockings and suspender pieces that define the house.

Chantelle, 2011 to 2022

In May 2011 Dim transferred the brand to the family-owned Chantelle group, which placed it alongside Passionata, Femilet and its own core label. Renaud Cambuzat, appointed creative director under Chantelle, said at the time that the goal was to make the brand a bit more arty without reinventing it.

Thomass herself announced her departure as creative director in December 2018, after 43 years. The Chantelle group took charge of the collections, and the house kept the codes she had built: fringe, fetish detailing, black with pink, ribbon bows.

A new owner in 2022

In January 2022 Chantelle sold the label to the French businessman Thierry Le Guénic, for an undisclosed price. Le Guénic had been assembling a group of distressed or undervalued French apparel names, including Maison Lejaby, Rasurel, Elixir and the Orcanta lingerie chain, along with Paule Ka and Burton of London. Chantal Thomass became one more name in that portfolio.

What the house is known for

The product range today is still built on the pieces Thomass revived in 1975: balconette bras, guêpières, garter belts, high-waisted briefs, stockings and bodysuits. The palette rarely leaves black, nude and pink, and bows appear on almost everything. Prices sit in the luxury tier, below couture houses such as Cadolle but above department-store French brands.

The designer, meanwhile, has worked well outside lingerie, on hotel interiors, perfume, furniture and entertainment projects, and remains one of the few French lingerie names that the general public recognizes by face, usually framed by her black bob.

Last updated October 1, 2026