Lou Paris

Lou is a French lingerie brand founded in 1946 in Grenoble, not Lyon, by André Faller and his wife Lucienne Faller, whose nickname "Lou" became the company name. Within two years of its launch it was the leading corsetry brand in France. After eight decades of ownership changes, the label was bought in 2024 by the retailer JLB groupe following a liquidation ruling by a Paris court, and its head office is now in Paris.

Lou in Grenoble: from a glove factory to the Capuche district

The founding story reads like a film script. According to the French Wikipedia account, André and Lucienne met on the Orient-Express. Lucienne was a gymnastics instructor with ideas about underwear that worked with the body, and the two set up shop together after the war.

The first workshop was an abandoned glove factory, a fitting start in Grenoble, which had been France's glove-making capital for generations. The company soon moved to the Cours Berriat, and in 1950 it opened a new factory of about 30,000 square meters on the rue du General Ferrie in the Capuche district. Lucienne designed bras that combined technical construction with good looks, and production scaled fast.

Ten percent on advertising

André Faller's contribution was marketing. He put 10 percent of turnover into advertising, a very high share for the time, and hired popular entertainers such as the singer Luis Mariano and the comedian Annie Cordy to front the brand. That spending is the likeliest explanation for how a provincial manufacturer became France's top corsetry name within two years.

Stock market, a general and a food conglomerate

By the time of its peak independence Lou was listed on the stock exchange and attracting foreign buyers. The Wikipedia account records that Charles de Gaulle opposed a sale abroad, a sign of how much a successful French lingerie maker counted as national property in that era. Instead, in 1971 the food group Generale Alimentaire took full control.

Jean Bellanger and the Miss Lou bra

The brand's second life began in 1978, when Jean Bellanger bought it. He designed the Miss Lou bra that year, and the model put Lou back among the industry leaders. Under Bellanger, annual output rose from about 20,000 pieces to 500,000, and in the 1980s the brand was sold in sixty countries. Miss Lou belongs to the family of molded and underwire bras that defined the French mass market of the period: structured, shaped and sold on the promise of a smooth line under clothes.

The Vanity Fair years and Lacelier

In 1991 and 1992 the company passed first to the Catalan group Vives Vidal and then to the American Vanity Fair Corporation. Under Vanity Fair, the headquarters in Seyssinet, just outside Grenoble, managed about 400 employees across the Rhone-Alpes region, and a site in Fontaine made roughly 30 percent of Lou and Bolero production. Lou now sat inside a portfolio of European brands rather than standing alone.

In 2015 Perceva, an investment fund focused on company turnarounds, bought Vanity Fair Brands Europe from Fruit of the Loom, which had come to own the European lingerie business. In 2019 the operating company was renamed Lacelier. The name was new, the problem was old: French mid-market lingerie was being squeezed between cheap fast fashion and established premium houses such as Aubade and Simone Perele.

Liquidation and the JLB purchase in 2024

The squeeze ended in court. In 2024, after liquidation proceedings, a Paris court decision handed the Lou brand to JLB groupe, a retailer. The Grenoble factories that once made half a million bras a year are long gone from the story, and the brand now runs from Paris.

Correcting the record

Earlier versions of this entry placed Lou in Lyon. The documented home is Grenoble, from the glove factory of 1946 to the Seyssinet offices of the 1990s. The web address on file, lou.fr, now belongs to an unrelated Polish dress boutique, a small reminder that an 80-year-old brand name can outlive the company that made it famous. The archive holds 32 Lou products.

Last updated October 7, 2026