Lily of France

Lily of France is an American bra and panty label whose old web address now forwards to Fruit of the Loom, the Kentucky underwear company owned by Berkshire Hathaway. That redirect is the firmest fact we could establish about it. The founding year and city in our own database, 1920 and New York, have no source behind them, so this page does not repeat them as history.

The French name tells the story of a sales strategy, not an origin. American intimates makers of the twentieth century often borrowed French words to suggest Paris lingerie on a department-store budget, and nothing we read says Lily of France was ever made or founded in France.

A name parked at Fruit of the Loom

When the address lilyoffrance.com is visited today, it lands on the corporate site of Fruit of the Loom, Inc. English Wikipedia does the same thing, sending the title "Lily of France" to its Fruit of the Loom article. Together those two redirects say who controls the name now, even though Fruit of the Loom's own brand list no longer shows Lily of France as an active label.

Fruit of the Loom is an old company in its own right. It traces its roots to 1851 and the Knight brothers of Warwick, Rhode Island, went through Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1999, and was bought by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway in 2002. Its headquarters are in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

The 2007 deal that brought women's intimates to Fruit

Fruit of the Loom became a serious lingerie owner on January 23, 2007, when it agreed to buy VF Corporation's intimate apparel business, Vanity Fair Intimates, for 350 million dollars in cash. The unit was renamed Vanity Fair Brands and run as a wholly owned subsidiary. VF itself had begun as a Reading, Pennsylvania glove and mitten maker in 1899 and launched its Vanity Fair lingerie line in the 1910s, so the sale ended almost a century of VF in women's underwear.

Vanity Fair Brands holds several American bra names. Wikipedia lists Vassarette, once a significant girdle maker, as one of them. Our sources do not say in plain words whether Lily of France came over in the same 2007 transaction or arrived another way, and we have not filled that gap with an assumption. What is certain is that the name now sits with the same parent as Vanity Fair.

Correcting the Hanesbrands claim

Our older listing described Lily of France as part of the Hanesbrands portfolio. Hanesbrands owns several rival American bra labels, Maidenform among them, so the confusion is easy to understand: mid-priced American bra brands from different owners tend to blur together in the public memory. But no source we found ties Lily of France to Hanesbrands, and the domain redirect points the other way. We have removed the claim.

What the label meant on the shop floor

Our records file Lily of France in the budget tier of the American bra market, the tier where most bras are actually bought. That market is built on a few core styles, chiefly padded and push-up bras, smooth molded T-shirt cups and everyday underwire. We have no Lily of France garments in the archive to examine, so we cannot say which of those styles carried the name in a given decade. Shoppers who own pieces can date and classify them with our complete bra type guide.

The label's current state is quiet. It has no shop of its own, no active brand page at its parent, and only a forwarding address to show that someone still holds it. For an older American bra name, that is how many mid-market lingerie brands end: not with a closure notice, but with a domain that points to the owner's front door.

Last updated October 7, 2026