Femilet

Femilet is a Danish lingerie brand and store chain, founded in 1923 by Jens Krøjgaard and rooted in the textile town of Herning in central Jutland. It sells bras, briefs, nightwear and swimwear, and since 2010 it has belonged to the French Groupe Chantelle, which makes every Femilet product in its own factories.

That short paragraph covers most of what Femilet says about itself. The company keeps its history brief, and the dates it gives are few but firm. What follows sticks to them.

Herning, 1923 to 1936

Herning is a long way from the lingerie capitals people usually name. It sits on the Jutland heath, and in the twentieth century it became the center of Denmark's knitting and textile trade. A tricot business there was ordinary, which is part of the point. Femilet grew out of a local knitwear economy, not out of a fashion house.

The company dates itself to 1923, when Jens Krøjgaard started the business. Thirteen years later, in 1936, he opened his first shop. It was called JK Tricotage, after his initials and the knitted goods it sold, and it stood on Bredgade in Herning. "Tricotage" is the old word for knitted fabric and knitted underwear, and it says plainly what Danish women were buying from him: jersey undergarments, not French silk.

The jump from a maker to a retailer shaped everything after. Femilet is today best understood as a chain of fitting shops with its own label, closer in structure to a fellow Danish chain such as Change than to a wholesale brand that only sells through other people's stores.

The 2010 sale to Groupe Chantelle

In 2010 Femilet was sold to Groupe Chantelle, the family-owned French lingerie maker headquartered in Paris. Danish Wikipedia puts the deal in November 2010 and describes it as part of Chantelle's push into northern Europe.

Chantelle is one of the oldest names in the trade. Femilet's own account of its new owner goes back to 1876, when François Auguste Gamichon founded the business, and notes that his nephew Maurice Kretz took it over in the early 1900s. The Kretz family still runs it, now in its fifth generation under Patrice Kretz. Chantelle was a name first used for girdles in 1949, and the company's first bra came in 1961.

Femilet arrived in a group that was already collecting labels. It now sits alongside Chantelle itself, Chantelle EasyFeel, the Chantelle Pulp line, Passionata and Livera, a Dutch lingerie retailer. Femilet is managed administratively from Amersfoort in the Netherlands, where Livera is also run.

What changed in the product

The most concrete effect of the sale is on manufacturing. Femilet states that all of its products are now made in Groupe Chantelle's own factories. A Danish chain that once sold local tricot now draws on the production lines of a large French bra maker. That gives a mid-priced Scandinavian label access to industrial cup molding and grading that a small company could not fund alone.

The visual identity was also brought closer to Chantelle's international store concept over the following years.

Debbie, Juliana and Ellie

Femilet names its bras the way Scandinavian brands often do, with a first name per style. Debbie, Juliana and Ellie are among the lines the company lists, along with technical fabric names such as SoftStretch Power. The range covers padded and unpadded styles, T-shirt bras, full-cup and half-cup shapes, briefs, shapewear, nightwear and swimwear. Danish Wikipedia notes soft-feel fabrics and memory foam in some cups, and cotton and modal in the sleepwear.

The company sums up its design aim in four Danish words: pasform, komfort, funktion og skønhed. Fit, comfort, function and beauty. It is a modest brief, and an honest one for a chain whose customers come in to be measured, not to be dazzled.

The chain today

Femilet runs 18 concept stores of its own in Denmark. It also has six shop-in-shops inside Magasin department stores and two inside Salling stores. Beyond Denmark the label is sold in Norway, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland and Austria, mostly through department stores and independent lingerie shops.

Femilet now describes itself as having more than 100 years of experience. The shop on Bredgade in Herning was where the retail side began. A century after Jens Krøjgaard started out, his initials are gone from the door, the factories are French, and the name on the window is still Danish.

Last updated October 7, 2026