Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair is an American lingerie brand from Reading, Pennsylvania, dated by its owners to 1919 and to the industrialist John Barbey. It grew out of a glove and mitten factory that turned to silk lingerie, became Vanity Fair Mills and then VF Corporation, and since 2007 has belonged to Fruit of the Loom, the Berkshire Hathaway underwear company. Today it sells everyday bras, panties, slips and shapewear under the Vanity Fair Lingerie name.

It is also a rare case of a parent company taking its name from a lingerie brand. The V and F in VF Corporation, the later owner of jeans and outdoor labels, stand for Vanity Fair.

From gloves to silk in Reading

In October 1899 John Barbey and a group of investors founded the Reading Glove and Mitten Manufacturing Company in Reading. They started with 11,000 dollars and a 320-square-foot factory leased for 60 dollars a month. Around 1913, according to the company history summarized on Wikipedia, the firm moved into silk lingerie, renamed itself Schuylkill Silk Manufacturing after the river that runs through Reading, and put its lingerie out under the Vanity Fair name. The brand itself gives 1919 as its founding year.

The business grew into Vanity Fair Mills, which went public in 1951. In 1969, with interests well beyond underwear, it renamed itself VF Corporation.

The brand's own list of firsts

Vanity Fair's site keeps a timeline of what it calls firsts, and they are worth reading as the company's own account of its place in American lingerie. In the 1920s it introduced a fabric it called Silkenese. In the 1930s it says it pioneered advertising for intimate apparel. In 1942 it claims to have been first to use live models in its showroom, and in the 1950s it introduced a finish it calls crystal pleating.

The most surprising claim is from 1953, when the brand says it was the first to put leopard print on intimate apparel. In the 1950s and 1960s its national campaigns were shot by Richard Avedon, Mark Shaw and Melvin Sokolsky, three of the best-known fashion photographers of the period. That is a strong roster for a brand now sold as everyday basics.

Bras with a smooth back

From the 1980s the emphasis moved from glamour to fit. The brand lists a V-Back Bra in the 1980s and the Illumination panty collection in 2000. In 2010 it launched the Beauty Back collection, built around smoothing the back under clothes. For its centenary in 2019 it introduced Beyond Comfort, again promoted for a seamless back design.

That steady focus on the back of the bra points to a customer who wants a full-cup bra that disappears under a knit top, not a fashion piece. Its current site lists underwire, wireless, sport and strapless bras, and bikini, brief, hi-cut and hipster panties, plus camisoles, slips and shapewear.

Sold to Fruit of the Loom

On January 23, 2007, VF Corporation sold its intimates business, Vanity Fair Intimates, to Fruit of the Loom for 350 million dollars in cash. Fruit of the Loom renamed it Vanity Fair Brands and runs it as a wholly owned subsidiary. Fruit itself has been owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway since 2002 and is based in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Vanity Fair Brands also holds Vassarette, an old American girdle and bra name. In the same mid-market aisle, the closest rivals in this encyclopedia are Warners and Maidenform.

Year	Event
1899	Reading Glove and Mitten Manufacturing Company founded
c. 1913	Silk lingerie and the Vanity Fair name
1951	Vanity Fair Mills goes public
1953	Leopard print, by the brand's account
1969	Company renamed VF Corporation
2007	Intimates sold to Fruit of the Loom
2010	Beauty Back collection

The website is run today by Vanity Fair Brands, LP, and its footer lists Fruit of the Loom, Russell Athletic and Spalding as sister brands. The silk mill name is long gone, but the lingerie label kept the name that the corporation kept only as two initials.

Last updated October 7, 2026