Ida Rosenthal

Ida Rosenthal (1886-1973), born Ida Kaganovich in Rakov in the Russian Empire, co-founded the American bra company Maidenform in 1922 with her husband William Rosenthal and her business partner Enid Bissett. She ran it as president from 1958 until her death in March 1973.

A seamstress from Rakov

Rakov is now in Belarus. At 18 she followed William Rosenthal to the United States, arriving at Hoboken in 1904, and Americanized her family name to Cohen. She worked as a dressmaker, and the two married in 1907. The older text on this page dated her arrival to 1905; the New Jersey Women's History Project gives 1904.

A dress shop on West 57th Street

In the early 1920s Rosenthal and Bissett ran a dress shop on West 57th Street in Manhattan. The fashionable line was flat and boyish, worn over bandeaux that pressed the bust down. The partners found their dresses hung better over something that supported the figure, and they reworked the bandeau into a design with two cups. Customers began asking for the bra without the dress. The women made them in silk and sold them for a dollar.

The shop was registered as Maiden Form in 1922, a name that turned its back on the boyish ideal. In 1925 the first Maidenform plant opened in Bayonne, New Jersey.

Ida Rosenthal and the mass market

The division of labor was clear. William, the designer of the family, is credited with standard cup sizes, the idea that a woman could buy a bra by band and cup. Ida was the seller, and her view was that Maidenform's future lay with the mass market, not with an exclusive few. By 1938 the company reported annual earnings of more than 4.5 million dollars. In 1942 she received a patent of her own, for an adjustable fastener.

War work, and a story that does not hold

During the Second World War the factories took military orders, including parachutes and about 28,500 vests that let paratroopers carry homing pigeons. Rosenthal converted production in a way that kept the company's access to materials.

The old version of this entry said she filed a "Declaration of Essentiality" that led the government to class bras with ammunition, and it quoted her. Neither the declaration nor the quote appears in the sources checked here, so both are gone.

The Chansonette and "I dreamed"

Two products of the postwar years made the name. The first was the Chansonette, the stitched cone-cup bullet bra, which sold more than a million in its first year. The second was advertising. In 1949 Maidenform began the "I dreamed I went shopping in my Maidenform bra" campaign, written at the agency Norman, Craig & Kummel with Kay Daly as its creative force. It ran until 1969, placing a woman in a bra in public settings, and became one of the best-remembered campaigns in American advertising.

William died in 1958 and Ida became president. In 1960 the company changed its name from Maiden Form Company to Maidenform, Inc. After her death the business stayed in the family, run by her daughter Beatrice and later her granddaughter Elizabeth. In 2013 Hanesbrands bought Maidenform for 575 million dollars.

Last updated October 7, 2026