Maison Cadolle

Maison Cadolle is a Paris corsetry and lingerie house founded by Herminie Cadolle, who in 1889 patented the corselet-gorge, a two-part undergarment whose upper half is widely treated as the first modern bra. Her descendants still run the house from 4 rue Cambon, where it makes bespoke lingerie and corsets alongside a ready-to-wear line.

Herminie Cadolle and the Commune

Cadolle was born in 1845 and was a close friend of Louise Michel, the anarchist schoolteacher who became the best-known woman of the Paris Commune of 1871. After the Commune was crushed, Cadolle left France for Buenos Aires. She was not deported, as is sometimes said; she went into exile of her own accord, for safety, and her husband and son went with her.

In Buenos Aires she went into business as a corsetiere. In 1887, with the support of her husband and her son Alcide, she opened the first Maison Cadolle there.

The corselet-gorge of 1889

Cadolle came back to Paris and opened a workshop on rue de la Chaussee d'Antin. In 1889 she filed a patent for the corselet-gorge, a corset cut in two pieces. The lower part shaped the waist as corsets always had. The upper part supported the bust from the shoulders with straps, instead of pushing it up from below with a rigid busk.

The house dates the invention to the Exposition Universelle of 1889, the fair that opened the Eiffel Tower. Other accounts place its public showing at the 1900 Exposition. Either way, by 1905 the upper half was being sold on its own, and that separate bust support is what makes Cadolle a standard name in histories of the brassiere. She is also credited with being the first to use fabric woven with elastic thread in lingerie, which made a bra that could move with the body possible.

Rue Cambon and five generations

Marie and the move of 1911

By 1911 Marie Cadolle had moved the business to rue Cambon, in the first arrondissement, a street that would also house Coco Chanel and sit a few minutes from Hermes on the Faubourg Saint-Honore. Mata Hari, the dancer later shot as a spy in 1917, is named among the house's clients.

Marguerite: tennis and the flat chest

In 1921 Marguerite Cadolle worked with tennis champion Suzanne Lenglen on a perfume campaign, which the house calls the first co-branding with a sports star. By 1925 fashion had turned against the bust, and Marguerite made flattening bras for Chanel and other clients who wanted the straight 1920s line. It is a neat irony that the house credited with lifting the bust spent the Jazz Age pressing it down.

Alice and the guepiere

In 1947, the year of Christian Dior's New Look, Alice Cadolle created the guepiere, a short, boned waist cincher, with the couturier Marcel Rochas. Two years later she received a Neiman Marcus fashion award, given by the Dallas store to designers it considered leaders in their field.

Poupie and the corset revival

In 1989, the centenary of the patent, Poupie Cadolle relaunched the corset in modern materials, just as the corset was returning to fashion as something to be seen rather than hidden. In the 2010s the house added a seduction-focused line called Geisha.

How a Cadolle commission works

The boutique is at 4 rue Cambon, with private couture salons on rue Saint-Honore. Bespoke work follows the haute couture pattern. A client is measured and chooses a model, fabric, color and finish, then returns for one to three fittings before the piece is finished. Each item is made to one person's body and wishes; the house does not publish prices. Ready-to-wear corset-style bras, lingerie and accessories are sold alongside the made-to-measure pieces.

A small house with a large claim

Several people have a claim to the invention of the bra, among them Mary Phelps Jacob, who patented a backless brassiere in New York in 1914. Cadolle's claim rests on the 1889 patent and on the separately sold bust support that followed. What sets the house apart is less the patent than its survival: the same family has run it since the 1880s, through the flapper years, the New Look and the corset's return, from one short street behind the Ritz.

Last updated October 7, 2026