Reischmann Fashion

Reischmann Fashion is the clothing business of Reischmann, a family-owned retailer from Upper Swabia in southern Germany. The firm traces itself to 1860, when Alois Reischmann opened a general supply shop in the village of Fleischwangen, and it now runs fashion, sport and lingerie stores in Ravensburg, Kempten, Memmingen and Ulm, plus an online shop at reischmann.de. It does not make lingerie. It sells it, and underwear and household linen were at the center of the family trade long before fashion was.

A village shop and a telephone

The early Reischmann business served farming households with whatever they needed day to day. The firm's own timeline records that Alois Reischmann II installed the first telephone in Fleischwangen in 1902, a small sign of a family that liked to be early. After the First World War, around 1920, the shop grew into what the company calls a department store for rural people.

Trousseaus in green DKWs

The 1950s are the part of the story that matters most for lingerie history. Reischmann expanded across Upper Swabia with four traveling salesmen driving green DKW cars from farm to farm, and the firm became particularly known for trousseaus. A trousseau, the bride's store of bed linen, towels, nightgowns and underwear, was still a serious purchase in rural southern Germany, often assembled over years and expected to last decades. Selling it meant knowing cotton and linen qualities, sizes and the expectations of mothers who had packed their own chests a generation before.

In 1960 Eugen Reischmann and his wife Sonja moved the business into town, opening "Reischmann - das Textilhaus der Familie" at Bachstrasse 18 in Ravensburg. The range was linens, undergarments and complete household outfitting, the trousseau trade in a permanent shop.

From linen house to fashion house

The shift to fashion came in steps. In 1972 the store moved to Bachstrasse 24 and refocused on women's and girls' clothing. Eugen Reischmann died in 1976, and Sonja ran the business with her children. A men's store followed at Bachstrasse 30 in 1982, and in 1988 the Möttelinhaus opened as a store for young fashion only, which the company describes as a novelty in German retail at the time. In 1992 eight separate houses were consolidated into one store of about 3,200 square meters. Sonja Reischmann retired in 1996 after 42 years, leaving her three sons in charge.

Expansion then moved beyond Ravensburg. Sport Reischmann opened in 1999. In 2004 the family bought the Wagner fashion house in Kempten and the Sommer house in Ravensburg, where a Tommy Hilfiger store opened in 2005. Memmingen got a 6,300-square-meter store in 2006. In 2011 a sports store of 5,100 square meters opened on Bahnhofstrasse in Kempten, described by the company as Germany's largest full-range sports store by floor space, and in 2012 Reischmann acquired the Walz house in Ulm. By its 150th anniversary in 2010 the firm had about 850 employees, and its four cities now hold more than 40,000 square meters of selling space. A logistics center in Ravensburg's Erlen industrial area opened on May 22, 2018.

Reischmann Lingerie on Bachstrasse

The lingerie business has come back to the street where the family's town trade began. Reischmann Lingerie is a dedicated store at Bachstrasse 22 in Ravensburg, a few doors from the 1960 linen house. The company presents it as a new boutique with an exclusive premium range, bra fitting, and styling advice from image consultants, laid out as a series of rooms rather than one sales floor.

The five Reischmann-listed pieces in this archive come from that retail side. The firm that once sold whole trousseaus from a car now sells single bras in a fitting room, but the core skill is unchanged since the green DKWs: matching the right fabric and the right fit to a customer who expects the piece to last.

Last updated October 7, 2026