Christmas Lingerie History: Nylons, Catalogs, Fantasy Bras

Christmas lingerie, meaning lingerie bought as a Christmas present or made up in Santa red with white trim, is a 20th-century American retail habit. It began with department stores selling nylon stockings as gifts in the 1940s, became a catalog business after Victoria's Secret opened in 1977, and turned into a televised event when the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show moved to the weeks before Christmas in 2001.

"Nylons by Christmas"

An early lingerie product with a Christmas rush was hosiery. DuPont showed nylon stockings at the 1939 World's Fair, then lost them to the war: nylon went into parachutes, tire cords and ropes instead. When DuPont announced in August 1945 that stockings were coming back, the slogan everyone repeated was "Nylons by Christmas."

Supply did not keep the promise. Between August 1945 and March 1946, queues for stockings turned into what newspapers called nylon riots. The worst was in Pittsburgh, where about 40,000 women lined up for 13,000 pairs. A pair of stockings was small, easy to wrap and scarce, and the slogan had already cast it as a Christmas present worth queuing for.

Racks of terry-cloth robes

The modern Christmas lingerie business was built around a man who hated shopping for it. Roy Raymond opened the first Victoria's Secret at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto in 1977 after a bad errand, which he described to Newsweek: "When I tried to buy lingerie for my wife, I was faced with racks of terry-cloth robes." His store was meant to be a place where men felt at ease, and the mail-order catalog soon became its main marketing tool. By April 1982 Raymond had mailed his 12th catalog, and that year he sold the company to Les Wexner of The Limited.

A shop designed for male gift buyers makes the most sense in December, and European retailers have said so. In December 2000, the manager of the Perosa lingerie store in Zurich told swissinfo that "a half or a third of our customers at this time of year are men who come and get their Christmas presents," and that the men went for the more expensive pieces. In January 2017, Ann Summers reported holiday sales up 17.2 percent and credited a celebrity campaign that pulled in late male shoppers, the "guy buy."

The Christmas catalog and the million-dollar bra

Department stores had already taught Americans to read a Christmas catalog as entertainment. Neiman Marcus sent its first Christmas mailing in 1926 and added its Fantasy Gifts in 1959, extravagant items printed less to be ordered than to be talked about. Victoria's Secret brought the same trick to underwear.

The first Fantasy Bra, the Million Dollar Miracle Bra, was modeled by Claudia Schiffer in 1996, on the cover of the catalog rather than on the runway, which the company judged the safer place for it. The jeweled bra became an annual holiday fixture. In 2010 the Bombshell Fantasy Bra, made by the Italian jeweler Damiani with more than 3,000 diamonds, sapphires and topazes in 18-karat white gold, was valued at $2 million and printed in the "Christmas Dreams and Fantasies" catalog. Six craftsmen spent 1,500 hours on it. The year before, the Harlequin Fantasy Bra was valued at $3 million. The jewelry was the headline; the catalog pages around it sold ordinary bras, robes and gift sets.

The paper side ended first. Victoria's Secret discontinued its catalog in May 2016, and the last Fantasy Bra, a 1990s-style crop top by Atelier Swarovski that took 930 hours to make, was worn by Elsa Hosk in 2018.

Why the runway moved to November

The fashion show was not born as a Christmas event. The first, on August 1, 1995, at the Plaza Hotel in New York, was a modest affair, and the shows of the late 1990s were staged in the days before Valentine's Day. The 1999 show was a webcast, announced with a $1.5 million Super Bowl advertisement.

Television changed the calendar. The 2001 show was taped on November 13 and broadcast on ABC on November 15, and from then on the show was scheduled ahead of the Christmas and holiday season. CBS carried it from 2002 to 2017. The last broadcast aired in December 2018, and in November 2019 the company confirmed there would be no show that year. When the runway came back in New York on October 15, 2024, it still landed just before the holiday shopping months.

Red velvet, white fur and Santa

The look of Christmas lingerie is borrowed from Santa's suit: red with white fur trim and a wide belt. Coca-Cola did not invent it. Thomas Nast drew a red-suited Santa for Harper's Weekly in the 1860s, and Haddon Sundblom's Coca-Cola paintings from 1931 popularized an image that already existed.

The flirtatious Christmas came later and from the radio. In October 1953, Eartha Kitt recorded "Santa Baby," Joan Javits and Philip Springer's list of sables, yachts and Tiffany decorations sung to Santa with plain innuendo. Some critics found it too suggestive for a holiday song, and Billboard named it the best-selling Christmas song of 1953, largely because of the fuss.

Lingerie makers now sell that joke as a garment. Adore Me's 2022 "On the Naughty List" collection included a push-up set with faux-fur trim, a jingle bell and red bows. Costume retailers sell bodysuits in red stretch velvet with white faux fur trim and a black buckled belt, the Santa suit cut down to a leotard. Velvet suits the season for a practical reason: a heavy, light-absorbing pile reads warm in December in a way that summer mesh does not.

What the gift data does not count

The numbers behind Christmas lingerie are thinner than the marketing suggests. The National Retail Federation's November 2024 survey of 8,135 adults found clothing was the most popular planned gift category, chosen by 54 percent of shoppers. The survey does not separate lingerie from the rest of clothing. The best evidence for December lingerie buying is still what store managers see at their tills, starting with Perosa's estimate from Zurich in 2000.

Last updated October 28, 2026

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