Cacique by Lane Bryant

Cacique is the lingerie and sleepwear brand of Lane Bryant, the American plus-size women's retailer based in Ohio. It sells bras, panties, shapewear and sleepwear in plus sizes, mostly through Lane Bryant stores and the retailer's website. The name itself is older than the plus-size line: it first belonged to a French-inspired lingerie store chain that Leslie Wexner's The Limited opened in the late 1980s.

The exact date Cacique became Lane Bryant's lingerie label is reported differently. One account says it launched as an in-house brand in 1996; the Ohio State University's Columbus fashion history project says the name has been used for Lane Bryant lingerie since 2005.

Lena Bryant's maternity dresses

Lane Bryant goes back to 1904, when Lena Himmelstein Bryant, a widowed dressmaker in New York, began selling clothes. A bank officer misspelled her first name as "Lane" on her paperwork, and she kept it. Her first commercial success was a maternity dress with an elastic waistband and an accordion-pleated skirt, at a time when pregnant women were expected to stay out of sight.

Customers who were not pregnant asked for clothes in larger sizes, and the business followed them. By 1923 sales had reached 5 million dollars, and plus-size clothing had overtaken maternity wear as the core of the company.

Into The Limited, 1982

In 1982 Leslie Wexner's The Limited bought Lane Bryant and brought it into the Columbus, Ohio, retail empire that also owned Victoria's Secret. That is where Cacique enters the story.

The first Cacique, a French-style store

In the late 1980s The Limited launched Cacique as a separate lingerie store, designed as a French-inspired companion to the more English-feeling Victoria's Secret. It never found a big enough audience and closed after only a few years. The name stayed in the company's files.

When Lane Bryant needed a name for its own intimates, Cacique was revived. It gave the plus-size retailer a lingerie label with a separate identity on the hanger and the shopping bag.

Sizes and products

Cacique is built around plus sizes. One published range lists lingerie in sizes 14 to 28 and bras from 36C to 46DDD, though the run has changed over time. The line covers full-cup and fashion bras, everyday panties, shapewear and sleepwear, plus performance products such as smoothing bras. Collaborations have included the American designer Lela Rose, who made her first-ever lingerie collection for Cacique.

Owners after The Limited

Lane Bryant, and Cacique with it, has changed hands several times:

• 2001: The Limited sold Lane Bryant to Charming Shoppes, for a reported 335 million dollars.
• 2012: Ascena Retail Group bought Charming Shoppes.
• 2020: after Ascena's bankruptcy, Sycamore Partners acquired Lane Bryant through a new holding company.

Lane Bryant is now headquartered in New Albany, Ohio, still in the Columbus area where The Limited built its fashion business.

The ad networks would not run it

Cacique's advertising has more than once run into the question of who gets to look sexy in lingerie. In 2010 a Lane Bryant television advertisement for Cacique was refused by Fox and ABC on the grounds of excessive cleavage, which prompted public complaints that comparable Victoria's Secret advertising had aired without trouble.

#ImNoAngel

In 2015 the retailer launched the #ImNoAngel campaign, a direct reply to the Victoria's Secret "Angels". It showed plus-size models in Cacique lingerie and drew heavy press and social media coverage. Lane Bryant followed with the slogans #PlusIsEqual and #ThisBody, all aimed at the same gap in mainstream lingerie advertising.

Since then, competitors such as Torrid and Savage X Fenty have pushed size-inclusive lingerie further into the mainstream. Cacique's advantage is age and distribution: it has been selling plus-size bras through a national store chain for decades, and the Lane Bryant business behind it is more than 120 years old.

Last updated October 1, 2026