Holiday Calendar

National Lingerie Day

Next celebratedSunday, April 25, 2027

Mary Phelps Jacob sold her brassiere patent for $1,500; the buyer made $15 million from it, and the day marks the industry those transactions built.

Countdown to the day
--DAYS
--HRS
--MIN
--SEC
Last updated August 17, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEApril 25
OBSERVED INUnited States
CATEGORYStyle
SUBCATEGORYFashion
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

An industry with receipts, a day without.

No documented founder, launch announcement, or establishment record has been identified for National Lingerie Day. It circulates through holiday-listing sites and through lingerie retailers' own marketing, with no originating person, company, or trade body on record.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday
INTRO

A $1,500 patent that earned $15 million

Mary Phelps Jacob sold her brassiere patent for $1,500. The buyer, the Warner Brothers Corset Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, made $15 million from it over the next three decades, by MIT's account. National Lingerie Day marks the industry those transactions built.

The industry keeps records. The observance does not: no founder, no launch announcement, no trademark filing, and nothing that explains the April 25 date. Every listing that carries the day repeats that date, and none of them says where it came from.

The garments are the opposite case. Patent offices, company archives and museum registers have been logging them in numbered detail since before the First World War.

Advertisement
ORIGINS

Lingerie Day history

INTRODUCTION

In 1908, after two years of development, the corset firm R. and W. H. Symington of Market Harborough put a new garment into production. It was called the Liberty Bodice, and it stayed in the range until 1974.

Sixty-six years on a production line is the kind of fact this trade leaves behind.

CHAPTER 01

The war that came for the corset steel

In 1917 the U.S. War Industries Board asked American women to stop buying corsets. The frames were largely metal, and the metal was wanted for military supplies. The request freed 28,000 tons of steel.

CHAPTER 02

Letters, and an argument about who put them there

Cup sizing arrived in the 1930s and the credit for it has never settled. Formfit announced three cup volumes per band size in 1932, labelled small, average and full. Accounts of Warner's system contradict each other, giving two different starting years.

Construction was being invented alongside the sizing. Joseph R. Bowen patented a technique he called Whirlpool stitching in 1935, building the cup out of concentric rings of stitches.

CHAPTER 03

The fibre the category runs on

In 1958 a DuPont chemist named Joseph Clois Shivers Jr. filed a patent for segmented copolyetherester elastomers. Granted in 1962, it covers the stretch fibre the whole category now runs on.

CHAPTER 04

Two jockstraps and a costume department

Lisa Lindahl, Hinda Miller and Polly Palmer Smith sewed two men's jockstraps together in the costume department at the University of Vermont. Their patent for an athletic brassiere was granted in 1979. Jogbra Inc. booked $500,000 in first-year sales.

The company had grown to roughly 200 employees by the time Playtex Apparel bought it. The prototype had become a corporate acquisition in about a decade.

The observance has no such trail. Nothing in the patent files or the museum registers records who chose April 25, or when the day first appeared. The trade's history is documented to the year, and the day named after it is not.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why National Lingerie Day Matters

FIT

The tape-measure method fails when it is tested.

A study in Ergonomics tested 45 women against professional fitting criteria and found the traditional tape-measure method overestimated band size and underestimated cup size. The gap widened as band size increased.

RETAIL

One retailer files billions in annual sales

Victoria's Secret and Co. reported net sales of $6.230 billion for a single financial year. Its filings also describe a workforce of more than 30,000 people.

CRAFT

The supply chain runs through two towns in France

At its height the Calais machine-lace trade ran more than 500 manufacturers. The looms are still working there, and the label that governs their output is held by the Fédération Française des Dentelles et Broderies.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Lingerie Day by the Numbers

80%
World's Leavers lace looms in France
1,380+
Victoria's Secret stores worldwide
700+
Sports bras tested at Portsmouth
72
Sizes in one 2022 sports bra range

TIMELINE

Timeline

Symington launches the Liberty Bodice

The Market Harborough firm put the garment into production after two years of development.

War board targets corset steel

The U.S. War Industries Board asked American women to stop buying corsets, freeing 28,000 tons of steel.

Whirlpool stitching is patented

Joseph R. Bowen patented a concentric-ring stitching method for the maker Hollywood Maxwell.

DuPont's stretch fibre patent granted

The elastic textile fibre DuPont filed on in 1958 completed its passage through the patent office.

First sports bra patent granted

Lindahl, Miller and Smith received U.S. Patent 4,174,717 for an athletic brassiere.
ORIGINS

Lingerie Day history

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe National Lingerie Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Read the original brassiere patent

The specification is public and opens with one plain line: this invention relates to improvements in brassieres. Start with U.S. Patent 1,115,674, filed in February 1914.

ASK

Ask which fitting method a shop uses

Fitting to professional criteria produces a different result from a tape measure used at home. It is a fair question to put to a salesperson before anything is measured.

FOLLOW

Follow the lab that tests sports bras

The University of Portsmouth has been running garment testing research since 2005. Its published work shows how these products are actually assessed.

CHECK

Check where the lace was actually made

Trim carrying the Dentelle de Calais-Caudry label is woven on Leavers looms in two towns in France and nowhere else. Look at the label on the trim before you look at the brand on the box.

BROWSE

Browse a free online garment archive

The Underpinnings Museum publishes online exhibition chapters on how these garments were constructed. Pick one and read it end to end.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Lingerie Day?

1 / 8

In 1917, what did the U.S. War Industries Board ask American women to stop buying?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no federal, state or municipal recognition on record, so it is an ordinary working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

14sources
10primary records
8independently dated
Primary records
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Establishing the new fit
How three inventors built the first sports bra, with their patent numbers and sales figures.
View source
Google Patents1914
US1115674A: Brassiere
Mary P. Jacob's 1914 brassiere patent, with drawings and the full specification.
View source
Google Patents1962
US3023192A: Segmented copolyetherester elastomers
DuPont's elastic fibre patent, filed by Joseph Shivers in 1958 and granted in 1962.
View source
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission2025-03
Victoria's Secret and Co. Reports Fourth Quarter 2024 Results
Filed full-year sales, store count and headcount for the largest US intimates retailer.
View source
Smithsonian National Museum of American History
JogBra prototype
The museum's record for the jockstrap prototype behind the first sports bra.
View source
Leicestershire Museum Collections
Symington Collection
A Market Harborough corset firm's archive, including the Liberty Bodice of 1908.
View source
Victoria and Albert Museum2016
Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear
The V and A's underwear exhibition and the garments it put on display.
View source
Cité de la dentelle et de la mode de Calais
Journey into the museum's collections
The Calais lace museum on its looms, its garment holdings and the town's trade at its peak.
View source
The Underpinnings Museum
Lift and Separate: Technology and the Bra, Chapter 4
An archive exhibition on 1930s cup sizing and the patented stitching that shaped cups.
View source
University of Portsmouth Research Portal2012
Evaluation of professional bra fitting criteria for bra selection and fitting in the UK
A peer-reviewed study comparing tape-measure sizing with professional fitting criteria.
View source
Additional coverage
University of Portsmouth2024-08
A million breast bounces have helped scientists lead a bra revolution
The university's testing programme, its volume of garment trials and the ranges it informed.
View source
Fédération Française des Dentelles et Broderies2015
The Label: Dentelle de Calais-Caudry
The rules behind France's protected machine-lace label and where the looms sit.
View source
Lemelson-MIT Program
Mary Jacob
MIT's inventor profile, including the price her patent sold for and what it later earned.
View source
NPR2014-08
Bra History: How A War Shortage Reshaped Modern Shapewear
The 1917 corset request and the corrected figure for the steel it freed.
View source
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Related holidays

TUE
10
Aug 2026
National Shapewear Day
Style

National Shapewear Day

Get ready to shape up and celebrate National Shapewear Day! Discover the perfect undergarments to boost your confidence and enhance your curves.

24Read
TUE
13
Oct 2026
National No Bra Day
Awareness

National No Bra Day

Join the movement and go braless this National No Bra Day! Show your support and help spread awareness for breast cancer prevention.

172Read
THU
05
Aug 2026
National Underwear Day
Style

National Underwear Day

Commercial attention for underwear and the businesses that sell it, a trade that put the brief on a Chicago mannequin in 1935 and sold six hundred packages by noon.

96Read
FOR MARKETERS & CREATORS

Turn every day into a moment your audience actually shows up for.

8.4M
Monthly readers
5K+
Holidays tracked
Holiday Calendar for Brands Developer API