Jockey

Jockey is an American underwear company founded in 1876 by Samuel T. Cooper in St. Joseph, Michigan, and now based in Kenosha, Wisconsin. It began as a hosiery business called Coopers, Inc., invented the Y-front men's brief in 1935, and in 1982 launched Jockey For Her, the women's underwear and intimates line that brings the company into this encyclopedia. It is still privately held, and in 2026 it is marking its 150th year.

Most women's lingerie houses in this archive started with a corset, a lace workshop or a fashion idea. Jockey started with socks and stockings, then men's underwear, and only arrived at bras and panties after a century of selling basics. That order explains a lot about what the women's line still looks like.

From Coopers hosiery to underwear

Cooper's company made hosiery for its first quarter century. According to the company history summarized on Wikipedia, it added undergarments in 1900. The firm settled in Kenosha, on the Lake Michigan shore between Chicago and Milwaukee, which remains its headquarters. We could not find a reliable date for the move from Michigan, so we leave it undated.

The Depression nearly finished the business. By 1934 Coopers was close to bankruptcy, and Harry H. Wolf Sr. was brought in to restructure it. The rescue came from a product rather than a balance sheet.

The blizzard launch of the Jockey brief

On January 19, 1935, Coopers put a new garment on sale at Marshall Field's State Street store in Chicago. It had been designed by Arthur Kneibler, whom the company called an apparel engineer. Kneibler dropped the leg sections that union suits and boxer-style drawers carried and gave the short knitted brief a Y-shaped overlapping fly. The name "Jockey" came from the support it claimed, which the company compared to that of an athletic jockstrap.

Chicago was in the middle of a blizzard that day, which made the timing look foolish. Yet more than 30,000 pairs were sold within three months. When the brief reached Britain in 1938, it was selling around 3,000 units a week. The design became the template for the modern men's brief, and the product name eventually swallowed the company name: Coopers became Jockey Menswear, Inc. in 1971 and Jockey International, Inc. in 1972.

That 1935 launch belongs in a lingerie museum for a plain reason. The brief proved that a short, close-fitting knit could replace the bulky underwear of the previous generation, and the women's full brief sold in multipacks today comes out of the same knit-goods trade.

Jockey For Her, 1982

Jockey waited a long time before selling to women under its own name. In 1982 it introduced Jockey For Her, a line of intimate apparel and underwear. The logic was simple: the brand already stood for cotton knit underwear that fit and lasted, and the women's line borrowed that reputation.

In 1997 the company bought the seamless panties division of Formfit-Rogers, an older American intimates maker. That purchase put Jockey into seamless knitting for women, a technique in which a garment comes off a circular machine as a tube with minimal side seams. The line lives on as the Seamfree collection on the company's site, where it sits next to the long-running cotton underwear.

What the women's range covers now

Jockey's current women's offer is broad and practical rather than fashion-led. The categories on jockey.com are underwear and the Seamfree collection, bras and bralettes, shapewear, sleep and loungewear, and activewear. Performance pieces sell under the EverActive name, and there are organic cotton basics. There is no couture lace and no runway ambition. The closest relatives on this site are comfort brands such as Triumph's Sloggi line in Europe and Warners in the United States.

The bras follow the same thinking as the briefs. Most are soft knit styles, including wireless bras and bralettes, built for daily wear. The company's strength is in fabric hand and fit across multipacks, not in engineered structure for large cup sizes.

A private company at 150

Jockey remains a private company. It also sponsors the Jockey Being Family Foundation, a charity that supports families after they adopt a child. In August 2020 the country singer Luke Bryan became a paid spokesperson.

For its anniversary the company is selling a limited-edition 1876 collection and has partnered with America250, the program around the 250th anniversary of the United States. Its own site calls Jockey "The Original American Underwear Brand." The claim rests on the men's brief, but the women's drawers carry the same idea: plain cotton, made to be worn every day, from a firm that has been knitting underwear in the Midwest since before most lingerie houses existed.

Last updated October 7, 2026