Valisère

Valisère is a lingerie brand that began in Grenoble, France, in 1913 as a fabric-glove maker linked to the Perrin glove company, turned to lingerie in 1922, and opened a factory in Brazil in 1934. The French company was bought by Triumph International in 1990 and wound up in 1993, but the Valisère name lived on in Brazil, where it became one of the country's best-known bra brands.

Gloves in Grenoble

The brand's earlier entry here called Valisère a Brazilian company founded in São Paulo in 1920. Neither the city nor the year holds up. The firm was set up in Grenoble in 1913 by Valérien Perrin and Alphonse Douillet as the Société anonyme grenobloise des gants d'étoffes, SAGE for short, a maker of fabric gloves and a subsidiary of the Perrin glove business. Grenoble was a glove town, and the leather and fabric glove trade there had been large since the nineteenth century.

SAGE added its own dyeworks in 1916 and took the name Valisère in 1919. Three years later it began making underwear and fine lingerie, and that became the business.

Valisère and the New Fibers

What made Valisère distinctive in French lingerie was its willingness to work with man-made fibers rather than silk alone. The company made lingerie in rayon acetate, then nylon, Tergal polyester and Lycra, following each new yarn as it came onto the market. Later Paris houses such as Simone Pérèle, founded in 1948, would build reputations on tulle and embroidery; Valisère's was built on fiber chemistry. A glove maker was well placed for this: fine knitted and woven fabrics were the trade it already knew.

Valisère's headquarters moved several times, to Paris in 1929, back to Grenoble in 1948 and to Paris again in 1966. Its factory on the rue de Paris in Grenoble stayed central. By 1950 the company employed about 3,000 people and was one of the city's principal employers. In 1946 it set up a sales company, Ditex, to run its networks in Algeria, French West Africa and Madagascar, and it also established itself in Morocco.

The 1934 Brazilian Factory

Brazil was the most important of the foreign ventures. Valisère opened a factory there in 1934, only twelve years after the company had moved from gloves into lingerie. The Brazilian business grew into a national brand in its own right, and in time it outlived the French parent.

"O Primeiro Sutiã a Gente Nunca Esquece"

Valisère's place in Brazilian culture rests largely on one television commercial. In 1987 the agency W/Brasil, led by the copywriter Washington Olivetto, made a film for Valisère about a girl receiving her first bra. The actress Patrícia Lucchesi played the adolescent, and the closing line, "o primeiro sutiã a gente nunca esquece", roughly "nobody forgets the first bra", entered everyday Brazilian speech. The phrase is still quoted and adapted, often with "sutiã" swapped for some other first.

The spot is regularly cited as one of only two Brazilian films on lists of the hundred greatest commercials of all time. It is a rare case of a lingerie advertisement remembered for tenderness rather than provocation, and it fixed Valisère in the public mind as the brand of a girl's first bra, the coming-of-age purchase made with her mother.

The Triumph Acquisition, 1990

In 1990 Triumph International, the family-owned group from Heubach then headquartered in Bad Zurzach, bought Valisère. The French operation did not last long under the new owner. In 1993 the French company was liquidated and its production moved to Obernai in Alsace. Portuguese-language sources credit the brand with a presence in about 30 countries and some 2,500 employees.

The Brand Today

In Brazil the name survived the French closure. Valisère still sells bras, panties, bodysuits, sleepwear and sets through its own Brazilian online store, valisere.com.br. The present-day brand is a mid-market Brazilian lingerie label whose deepest root is a fabric-glove factory in the Alps more than a century ago.

Last updated October 7, 2026