Gossard

Gossard was a corset and bra maker founded in Chicago in 1901 by Henry Williamson Gossard as the H. W. Gossard Co., which went bankrupt in the Depression and was reborn as a British company. For three decades it made the Wonderbra under license for the UK market, and it later sold its own push-up and glossy-finish lines through British department stores. In May 2026 Gossard announced that it had ceased trading and entered liquidation, ending a 125-year run.

Sarah Bernhardt's corset and a Chicago start

The founding story is a theatrical one. Gossard is said to have been inspired by a corset worn by the actress Sarah Bernhardt in Paris, and he set up his company in Chicago in 1901 to make corsets for American women. The firm's best-known idea of the early years was to move the corset laces to the front, where the wearer could reach them herself. It promoted the products heavily under the slogan "The Gossard Line of Beauty."

The American company grew quickly but not safely. In 1928 it was reorganized as a division of Associated Apparel Industries, Inc., and in 1933, deep in the Depression, it filed for bankruptcy.

A Chicago name becomes a British company

What survived was the British side of the business. After the bankruptcy Gossard was reformed as a British company and carried on making underwear and hosiery in the UK. During the Second World War it turned its machines and skills to parachutes, sails and bras for the military, a familiar pattern for corsetry firms that had the heavy sewing equipment and the workforce for technical textiles.

In 1959 Gossard was bought by Courtaulds, the British textile group, and it spent most of the next half-century inside it. The 1960s brought the panty-girdle, the softer, brief-shaped successor to the boned girdle and an ancestor of today's control brief. In the 1970s came Glossies, a line made to look transparent and slightly iridescent, and in the 1980s the Ritz collection, sold in matched colors.

The Wonderbra years, 1964 to 1994

Gossard's most important product for most of this period did not carry its own name. From 1964 the Gossard division of Courtaulds made and sold the Wonderbra in Britain under license. The push-up bra was a modest line for years, and then, between 1991 and 1993, UK sales jumped as the style came back into fashion.

Gossard tried to use that moment to negotiate better terms with Sara Lee, the American owner of the Wonderbra name. It was a misjudgment. Sara Lee chose not to renew, took the brand in-house, and the license expired in January 1994. Months later Sara Lee launched the "Hello Boys" posters with Eva Herzigova, the campaign that made the Wonderbra a household word. Some accounts credit that campaign to Gossard, but the Wonderbra's own history makes clear it belonged to Sara Lee, the company that had just ended Gossard's license.

Owners after Courtaulds

Year	Event
1901	H. W. Gossard Co. founded in Chicago
1928	Becomes a division of Associated Apparel Industries
1933	Bankruptcy; business continues as a British company
1959	Acquired by Courtaulds
1964	Starts making the Wonderbra under UK license
1994	Wonderbra license ends in January
2000	Sara Lee buys Courtaulds Textiles for about 150 million pounds
2006	Sara Lee sells Courtaulds Textiles to a consortium led by Hong Kong-based PD Enterprise
2026	Gossard ceases trading and enters liquidation on May 14

The ownership around these years is tangled. The irony of 2000 is plain: the company that had taken the Wonderbra away from Gossard now owned Gossard too. Encyclopedia sources also say that at some point Gossard passed to the French group DBApparel and was reacquired by Courtaulds in 2007. Courtaulds' lingerie brands included Gossard and Berlei.

The last years

Gossard's late marketing moved with the times. In 2022 it ran a body-positive campaign titled "I Am Enough," a long way from the glamour of its push-up years. Four years later came the announcement that Gossard had officially ceased trading and entered liquidation, effective May 14, 2026. The company's website could not be reached when this entry was written. The museum archive holds no Gossard products at present, which leaves the brand where most of its history now lives: in museum collections of front-laced corsets and 1960s panty-girdles, and in the memory of a Wonderbra license that Gossard lost just before the bra became famous.

Last updated October 7, 2026