Dillard's

Dillard's is an American department store chain founded by William T. Dillard in 1938 in Mineral Springs, Arkansas, and headquartered in Little Rock since 1964. It runs about 271 stores in 30 states, most of them anchoring regional malls across the South and West, and its lingerie and intimates department stocks around 80 brands, from French fitted bras to pajamas. In this encyclopedia Dillard's appears as a retailer, the shop where a great many of the brands on this site are actually bought.

Mineral Springs and "the tater house"

William Dillard opened his first store in Mineral Springs, a small town in southwest Arkansas, in 1938. Locals called it "the tater house," a nickname that says a good deal about the scale of the business at the start. Like many American department store dynasties, the family grew by moving from small towns to county seats and then to the cities, and the company set up its headquarters in Little Rock in 1964.

The shares went public in 1969, and the company then grew by a strategy that defined American retail for a generation: anchor stores in the new enclosed malls, and steady acquisition of regional chains that had grown old or tired.

A chain built from other department stores

Dillard's is in large part an assembly of older store names. Its acquisitions include Fedway in 1971, Leonard's in 1974, Lowenstein's in 1982, Stix Baer & Fuller, Diamond's and John A. Brown in 1984, Joske's and Cain-Sloan in 1987, Selber Bros. and Miller & Paine in 1988, Higbee's in Cleveland, D.H. Holmes of New Orleans in 1989 and Ivey's in 1990. The largest deal came in 1998, when it bought the Mercantile Stores company, the same year it entered California. In 2001 it took over locations from Montgomery Ward and from ZCMI in Utah.

Each of those chains had its own foundations department, with fitters, regular customers and preferred brands. As those chains were folded into one, lingerie brands that had once sold to a dozen regional buyers found themselves dealing with one.

The Dillard's intimates department

The store's lingerie offer is broad. Its intimates department covers bras, panties, shapewear, slips, robes, sleepwear and pajamas, bodysuits and rompers, bridal lingerie and a category of caftans and patio dresses filed alongside nightwear. The retailer lists around 80 lingerie and sleepwear brands.

The bra wall is where Dillard's matters most to this encyclopedia. It carries the French houses Chantelle and Simone Perele, the Japanese-owned Wacoal, the full-bust specialists Elomi and Fantasie, and American names such as Le Mystere, Natori, Tommy John and Hanky Panky. Shapewear comes from Spanx and Honeylove. Sleepwear and lounge are a large share of the floor, with Carole Hochman, Karen Neuburger, PJ Salvage, BedHead, Eileen West, Barefoot Dreams, UGG and Lauren Ralph Lauren.

That mix tells its own story. The brand list leans toward fit and support rather than fashion lingerie, the territory of the underwire bra cut in many band and cup sizes, and toward sleepwear, a classic gift category. It is a department built for the customer who wants to be fitted, or who already knows her size in a particular Wacoal style and buys it again.

Family control and the numbers

Dillard's has remained a family-run public company. William T. Dillard II is chairman and chief executive, and Alex Dillard is president. In its 2025 fiscal year the company reported revenue of about 6.5 billion dollars, operating income of about 695 million and net income of about 570 million, with roughly 28,800 employees. Texas, with 54 stores, and Florida, with 40, are its largest states.

Clearance stores and the pandemic

The company also runs clearance centers, 28 of them as of 2020, that sell overstock, off-season and damaged goods at deep discounts, a channel through which much end-of-season lingerie passes. The pandemic forced wide closures in 2020, but the chain recovered strongly in 2021.

Dillard's in recent years

Recent moves have been incremental rather than dramatic: a new store in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 2024, a shop-in-shop concept called The Coterie Shop, and a new co-branded credit card with Citibank and Mastercard. For lingerie brands, Dillard's remains a national chain that still sells fitted European bras in physical stores across 30 states, at a time when much of that business has moved online.

Last updated October 7, 2026