An Uplifting Responsibility

"I wasn't meant for snow shoveling."

            Ida Rosenthal wanted to foment a revolution against Russia's czar. Instead she sewed a revolution in fashion. Born 1886 in a small town near Minsk, she went to high school and worked as a seamstress in Poland. While there, the Jewish teenager became exposed to radical notions such as women's rights. Upon returning home, she dared make fiery public speeches urging the tsar's ouster.

            She towered four-foot 10-inches tall and had a full, rounded figure—zaftig as one might say in Yiddish. Her feminine feistiness and form appealed to a young listener named William Rosenthal. He, too, had a radical bent. Fearing the tsar's wrath, they emigrated to Hoboken, N.J., and were soon wed.

            Ferocious for her independence, Ida refused to slave in a sweatshop 12 hours a day.

"I don't want to work for anyone else," she vowed. She couldn't read or speak English, but she did have the moxie to gamble on her business prowess—She bought a sewing machine on an installment plan. Thus, she began making inexpensive knock-offs of stylish frocks she saw in magazines. Fast forward a few years, and she had 15 employees.

This Wise Decision

            Fate in the form of a heavy snowfall intervened. A cop on the beat told her to shovel the snow in front of her business. The drifts were half as tall as she was, and the job was an ordeal, even for someone as tough as her.

            "I wasn't meant for snow shoveling," she decided and soon moved to Manhattan. This wise decision led her to more affluent customers, and now she turned out more fashionable clothes at higher prices.

            Around this time, Uncle Sam decided to muscle in on the fashion business. World War I meant America needed more steel for more battleships. In those days, all women wore corsets, and most had steel boning. When women did as Uncle Sam commanded, that freed up 28,000 pounds of steel for cannons and tanks and turrets.

            In the process, women were freed, too, literally. The loose-fitting flapper look became the thing. Women flattened their breasts with bandage-style bandeaux to get that "boyish" look.

Women, Not Boys

            That didn't work so well for zaftig ladies like Ida, and lots of women wanted to look like…women, not boys. Her business partner started sewing the bandeaux into dresses. William hobby was sculpting, and he fashioned a make-shift brassiere with soft-knitted pockets.

            At first, her company sewed bras into dresses with no thought of selling them separately. Then they gave them away. Sensing that demand might bust out, they started selling them for a dollar a piece. In 1922, Ida launched a new company—Maidenform.

            That's when the worries really began. The company was tiny, and if the whims of fashions shifted, Ida would be broke. Luckily, being based in Manhattan meant being near the theatre district and its open-minded vaudevillians. Once women on Broadway wore bras, Hollywood took notice, and once movie stars became customers, the rest is fashion history.   

            Ida gradually got out of the dress business. When the Crash of 1929 hit, most dressmakers went belly up, while Maidenform found itself well-supported financially. During the Depression, it made a half million or more bras a year. (The company did make one misstep during WWII. After winning a contract to make underwear for GIs, it learned that soldiers didn't particularly care to have the words Maidenform Bra Company stamped in their boxers.) 
           While Ida did not invent the brassiere, her chutzpah made it a must item in every woman's wardrobe. Her Russian spirit of revolution and her American zeal for innovation made her a melting pot success story, or as Fortune Magazine put it, she's "as bright as a Christmas sparkler and as nicely rounded as a bagel."

           

MORAL: Do what the policeman says.

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