Gerard Pasquier

Launched in 1953 under its founder's name, Gérard Pasquier is a French women's fashion brand first famous for a pleated skirt and today sold online as a ready-to-wear and lingerie label with a strong line in menstrual underwear. The brand's website, gerardpasquier.fr, is operated by Vestinvest, a simplified joint-stock company registered at Bobigny with its address in Noisy-le-Sec, east of Paris. Where the company was founded, and how it passed from its founder to its current operator, the brand does not say.

The pleated skirt that built a brand

The company's own short history starts with one garment. In its words, the eponymous label launched in 1953 "had established itself thanks to its mythical pleated skirt, then broadened into a complete wardrobe." A pleated skirt is a sensible foundation for a mass-market women's label in postwar France: it flatters a wide range of figures, it suits office and weekend alike, and once a factory has mastered permanent pleating it can produce the same pattern in new fabrics season after season.

From that base the line widened into dresses, trousers, tops, skirts and outerwear, the full wardrobe of a mid-market French woman rather than the fashion statements of the Paris couture houses.

Gérard Pasquier on French television

1977, and an early bet on advertising

The brand's claim to a place in French retail history is its marketing. According to the company, its founder was among the first, from 1977, to use television to make a clothing brand known. Television advertising for clothing was still unusual then, and the company presents the move as pioneering.

The slogan most people of a certain age remember is "Gérard Pasquier, pour être bien dans sa peau", roughly "to feel comfortable in one's own skin". The company says that during the 1980s these campaigns made it a leader in its market. The line is worth noting for this encyclopedia, because comfort in one's own skin is exactly the promise the brand now makes for its underwear.

1987: boutiques in Paris and a franchise network

Television created demand; stores had to meet it. In 1987 the brand opened two boutiques in Paris under its own name and began developing a franchise network, according to its history page. Franchising lets a label spread to new towns without carrying the cost of every lease itself.

From ready-to-wear to lingerie

The current business looks rather different from the 1980s one. The website now sells ready-to-wear alongside a lingerie section of bras, panties and bodysuits, plus swimwear and accessories. It describes its style as classic quality, aimed at comfort, and offers extended size ranges as part of a stated commitment to inclusivity. The site does not single out signature bra shapes, but a comfort-first range of this kind is the territory of the full cup bra and the high waist brief rather than of fashion-led lingerie.

Menstrual underwear at the front of the shop

The most prominent intimates product on the site is the menstrual brief. The homepage runs a tiered promotion on period underwear, 10 percent off one pair, 20 percent off two and 30 percent off three or more, and the category sits alongside ready-to-wear and lingerie as one of the three main sections of the shop. That is a notable choice for a brand with a 1950s skirt in its past, and placing period pants up front signals which customer the label now hopes to reach.

Construction details and fabrics for the menstrual line are not described in the sources available for this entry. Most period underwear of this type relies on a multi-layer gusset of absorbent microfiber or cotton above a leakproof membrane, but the specific build of the Gérard Pasquier pieces could not be checked.

What the record does not say

Several pieces of the story are missing from the brand's own account. It gives no founding city, no factory, no figures for the size of the franchise network at its peak, and no explanation of how the business moved from the founder's company to Vestinvest. The site's legal notice names Vestinvest and its registration number, but nothing published by the brand links the two histories in detail.

What is clear is continuity of name and a deliberate return to its old promise. Seven decades after the pleated skirt, the label that sold French women comfort in their own skin on 1980s television is selling it again, this time in the form of underwear.

Last updated October 7, 2026