Skill, Love, and a Dream: Maidenform and the Story of Ida and William Rosenthal
Image by Sanem Odabaşi
Imagine two revolutionaries in their late teens in early 1900s Tsarist Russia. One deserted the army of the repressive government and the other assisted their lover in this defiant act. They embrace each other for what they fear will be the last time. After saying goodbye, the deserter flees the country to his only refuge: the United States.
After months of separation, the two lovers reunite in Di Goldene Medina (the Golden Land) of the United States. In their new life, the couple get married, have two children, and pursue their American Dream by creating… an underwear company?
Although not the typical love story, this tale is about how two people sustained their relationship through the daily stressors of married life, assimilated to a new country, coped with a child’s death, and pursued their business dreams through women’s underwear. For many, the revealing nature of bras, panties, and girdles evokes erotic thoughts and feelings. But for these young revolutionists, this intimate apparel also signified stability, family, and a promising future.
Those revolutionaries grew up to be Ida and William Rosenthal. While juggling married life and parenting two children in early twentieth-century New York, the Rosenthals were also the co-founders of the intimate apparel company Maidenform. The lingerie business is now a hundred-year-old, multi-million-dollar corporation that sells bras, underwear, and shapewear online and in stores worldwide. The Rosenthals nurtured Maidenform from its infancy in a small Manhattan boutique to international renown when they were involved with the company. They built the business by developing an abundance of comfortable, supportive garments that did not sacrifice the fashionable silhouette of the time.
“Although not the typical love story, this tale is about how two people sustained their relationship through the daily stressors of married life, assimilated to a new country, coped with a child’s death, and pursued their business dreams through women’s underwear. ”
Maidenform during the Rosenthal era also produced the famed “I Dreamed…” advertising campaign in 1949. These advertisements attracted national attention for their daring, and some say empowering, stance on brassieres. [1] They placed a Maidenform model with only a bra covering her chest in roles and parts of American society that were usually regulated for men. In a swirling text, the woman exclaimed how she dreamed of wearing her Maidenform while fighting fires, mountain climbing, or famously, winning an election.
This foundation was built from Ida’s logic and William’s creativity. “No one succeeds alone,” Ida informed newspaper journalist Roberta Fleming Roesch in 1962. “But I do believe that today, too, just as when my husband and I began, a simple idea can still lead to great fulfillment.” [2]
When establishing the business, Ida took on the responsibilities of sourcing manufacturers and strategizing the company’s advertising while constantly finding new ways to evolve the company. “To get and stay in a good spot in business you have to maintain your curiosity and your ethics. You have to keep innovating new things. You have to stay up to date by reading, learning and keeping up with people.” [3]
William’s voice was quieter and heard through his artistic skill. He was a trained sculptor who utilized his creativity to craft and patent new products for the brand. With William’s artistry, a bra was not only a garment; it was a three-dimensional sculpture.
“Aside from their complementary work styles, they held a strong bond that was based in love and shared experience.”
Aside from their complementary work styles, they held a strong bond that was based in love and shared experience. Both Ida and William were immigrants to the United States. He arrived at Ellis Island on January 14, 1905, and she followed three months later in April. [4] They were from a shtetl called Rakov, a small Jewish community in what is now Belarus.
During Ida and William’s childhoods, the citizens of Rakov lived under the rule of the Tsar in the Pale of Settlement. [5] Life in the Pale was based around discriminatory policies that prevented Jews from occupations and opportunities within Russian society. Russian rule also initiated violent pogroms where armed servicemen tore through Jewish communities, killing anyone in their path.
Young Ida and William did not know each other growing up; he was five years her senior and they had very different childhoods. A boy from a scholarly family, William had access to formal education. Ida spent her early years assisting her mother who tended to the household, ran a farm, and managed the family general store. [6] Once she reached her teenage years, Ida trained as a dressmaker, a trade that was one of the few opportunities for working-class Jewish women to earn livable pay and be their own boss. [7]
Image by Sanem Odabaşi
Dressmaking took Ida to the nearby cities of Minsk and Warsaw. In the latter, seventeen-year-old Ida was introduced to the secular socialist political party, the General Jewish Labour Bund. [8] The Bund gave disenfranchised Jews the opportunity to air the sins of their oppressors and to organize as a community. When she returned to Rakov a year later, she joined the local Bund and participated in their gatherings.
During one of those Bund meetings, someone was watching Ida. He was a young man named William (Wolf) Rosenthal. He was 23 and stood tall compared to her small frame. [9] Visual opposites, she had an angled Slavic face emphasized by a hairstyle parted down the middle. He was made up of a strong jaw, round-tip nose, and dark, deep-set eyes that matched the tuft of black hair atop his head. She was a spitfire, loud, brash, and confident. He was of a more subdued make, a quiet creative with an appetite for commitment. Ida fueled William’s revolutionist fire, and he cooled her hot disposition. They were meant to be.
Ida and William’s passion was further ignited as the revolution advanced, which grew closer by the onset of the Russo-Japanese War. [10] Life for Ida was raw, dangerous, and, most importantly, exciting. She had a new love, and if the Bund succeeded, a new country.
Everything changed when William was drafted into the Russian army. [11] Despite the opportunities that William’s gender granted—an education, social respect, and career opportunities—it also qualified him for Russian army service. Serving in the Russian army was a devastating prospect for a Jewish man. “... A Jewish recruit was likely to be treated with severity, no matter if his behavior were perfect,” wrote Mary Antin in her memoir, The Promised Land. “The Jewish recruit dreaded, indeed, brutality and injustice at the hands of officers and comrades.” [12]
William arrived at the camp at the scheduled time, stayed for a couple of hours, and then bribed his way out. [13] He changed into street clothes in the woods, which were packed and placed by his beloved partner in crime.
Once he stepped out of the training camp, William had no other option but to leave Rakov and Ida. The duo said their goodbyes in secret with declarations of love no matter their location. William then boarded a train to the Netherlands and, upon arrival, walked up the ramp onto the S.S. Rotterdam and departed for Manhattan. [14]
“The pretty bralette began as a handout with the purchase of a gown but demand for the brassiere soon grew and produced a significant income. It became apparent that these undergarments were a better business opportunity than selling dresses on Fifth Avenue.”
Despite her heart being an ocean away, Ida continued her activism with the Bund, which began to protest during the village’s market days. As Ida was causing a ruckus, her leadership was noticed. Like in the Bund meetings, a man was watching her, but he wasn’t as smitten as William. Protesting in the center of the village caught the attention of a frequent customer of her mother’s general store, a local police official. He warned her mother that Ida would be imprisoned if she did not take a vow of silence. [15]
The safest solution for Ida was to do the same as William. In America, she would live with her uncle and younger sister, who left Russia a year before, in Hoboken, New Jersey. Ida may have no longer been a revolutionary after she traded the cold, crisp air of Eastern Europe for the stagnant fog of Hoboken, but her rebel spirit didn’t wane. She established herself, found work, and rented a cold-water basement flat with her sister. [16] She also reunited with William, who was living with family in Manhattan.
Once they reconvened, William developed a habit of crossing the Hudson and frequenting Ida's apartment for unchaperoned visits. The next year the couple was married on June 10, 1906, in an Orthodox ceremony funded by William’s uncle. Always one to challenge the norm, Ida ventured from the traditional fully-covered modest dress and designed a French wool wedding gown with a skirt that hit above the ankle. [17]
Their first home as spouses was in Ida’s new hometown of Hoboken, where she took orders as Mrs. W. Rosenthal, Gowns. However, after the four-foot-eleven Ida had to shovel a large mound of snow in front of her shop per the city’s regulations, the couple relocated across the river to the Manhattan neighborhood of Hamilton Heights. [18]
Their son Lewis was born a year after the wedding, and daughter Beatrice followed in 1916. By the time of Beatrice’s birth, Ida’s dressmaking business was so lucrative that she had others doing the sewing and a domestic maid to help with the daily tasks of cleaning and cooking. [19]
But Ida could not be held in one place for too long. As she fitted her customers in day dresses, she was unexpectedly preparing for her future. It would be through this clientele that Ida would meet Enid Bisset.
“What Ida and Enid were selling wasn’t just a uniquely designed product; it was a part of a greater movement in women’s underwear.”
Enid Bissett was a British ballroom dancer turned retailer who owned Enid Frocks, a boutique on 36 West 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan. One day in 1921, Enid noticed a stylish client of Ida's in her boutique. Leaving Midtown, Enid was able to locate Ida in her 141st Street shop. She proposed a business deal: she would provide the clients and supplies, and Ida would make and sell the gowns. Ida was interested. For the partnership to be complete, Enid wanted Ida to contribute $4,500 for an equal share. [20] Once Ida secured the money, she was co-owner of Enid Frocks, Inc.
As the boutique was making dress after dress, there was a snag in their plan. They were finding that the bustline of their gowns was not properly fitting. No matter her shape, from round to sagging, the presence of a woman’s breast distorted the dress’s bustline. Unlike a wavy seam or uneven hemline, these bustlines were difficult to fix.
Image by Sanem Odabaşi
The design duo knew that a solution was needed. With the help of William, they discovered that when a bandeau was cut down the middle and a drawstring was sewn inside the bottom with two satin straps wrapping the shoulders, it lifted the breasts upward and away from the body. Later in life, Ida said about the design. “... We made a little bra with two pockets. Not too accentuated, of course … like any new idea, the first airplane was not a jet.” [21] The pretty bralette began as a handout with the purchase of a gown but demand for the brassiere soon grew and produced a significant income. It became apparent that these undergarments were a better business opportunity than selling dresses on Fifth Avenue. Three years later, the women closed their dressmaking business to begin a new venture in intimate apparel.
What Ida and Enid were selling wasn’t just a uniquely designed product; it was a part of a greater movement in women’s underwear. [22] They were selling uplift, a technique that lifts the breasts from the shoulders and parts them into cups. Wearing an uplifting brassiere raises the breasts away from the body, which allows for more movement and security. As the 1920s progressed, competitive brands would begin to part their brassieres; Ida and Enid’s invention was one of the first to be released on the market.
Enid’s poor health forced her to retire in 1940, leaving Ida and William to continue the business. [23] Together, they weathered the good and bad of running an intimate apparel company while managing the highs and lows of married life. As Maidenform was experiencing success during the Great Depression, Ida and William lost their firstborn Lewis, who tragically passed away in 1930 at 23. Devastated by their loss, they honored his memory by donating 188-acres to the Boy Scouts of America for a camp that is still in use today in Rockaway, New Jersey. [24]
Death revisited the Rosenthal family when after 53 years of marriage, William passed away in 1958. [25] It wouldn’t be until 14 years later when Ida would join him in 1973. Her life without William was spent on Maidenform and as a public expert on women’s underwear. Journalists flocked to her side to get her opinion on Rudi Gernreich’s “no bra” bra and tell her story as a Russian immigrant turned American millionaire; her Bundtist past was never mentioned. In 1963, she served as the only woman on a trade trip to Russia to study Soviet apparel factories. [26] When she retired in 1966, she passed the company to another couple, daughter Beatrice and son-in-law, Joseph Coleman. [27]
Ida and William Rosenthal were not the first nor the last married couple to succeed in the apparel industry. But as Maidenform enters its 100th year, it is important to recognize the incredible story of revolutionaries who built a solid foundation with skill, love, and a dream.
Notes
[1] Burns-Ardolino, Wendy A. Jiggle : (re)shaping American Women. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007).
[2] Your Career.” Shamokin News-Dispatch, 31 December 192, p 6.
[3] “Your Career.” Shamokin News-Dispatch, 31 December 192, p 6.
[4] Year: 1905; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 0564; Line: 12; Page Number: 75. Year: 1905; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 0530; Line: 8; Page Number: 118.
[5] Mordecai Schreiber. The Shengold Jewish Encyclopedia (Rockville, Maryland: Schreiber Publishing, 2008).
[6] David Laskin. The Family : a Journey into the Heart of the Twentieth Century (New York: Penguin Books, 2015).
[7] Susan A. Glenn. Daughters of the Shtetl: Life and Labor in the Immigrant Generation. (Cornell University Press, 1990).
[8] Gitelman, Zvi. The Emergence Of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism And Zionism In Eastern Europe. The Emergence Of Modern Jewish Politics (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003).
[9] Year: 1910; Census Place: Hoboken Ward 4, Hudson, New Jersey; Roll: T624_888; Page: 23A; Enumeration District: 0062; FHL microfilm: 1374901.
[10] Laskin, 37.
[11] Laskin, 39. Sourced from an unpublished article written by Hy Lieberman.
[12] Mary Antin. The Promised Land Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1912.
[13] Laskin, 39.
[14] Year: 1905; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 0530; Line: 8; Page Number: 118.
[15] Laskin, 42.
[16] Burstyn, Joan N. Past and Promise : Lives of New Jersey Women. (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1998).
[17] Laskin, 76.
[18] Burstyn, 387.
[19] "United States Census, 1910," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MKYD-VJN : accessed 12 February 2022), Ida Rosenthal in household of William Rosenthal, Hoboken Ward 4, Hudson, New Jersey, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 62, sheet 23A, family 458, NARA microfilm publication T624 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1982), roll 888; FHL microfilm 1,374,901.
[20] Patricia M’Cormack. “Ida Rosenthal, 73, Too Busy to Retire From Uplift Trade.” The Terre Haute Star, 4 July 1960.
[21] “Ida Rosenthal, Co-Founder of Maidenform, Dies: Popularized Wearing of Bras as an Aid to Fashion To Make Dresses Fit Custom Dress Shop Expanded by Immigrant Couple.” New York Times (1923-Current File). New York, N.Y: New York Times Company, March 30, 1973.
[22] Farrell-Beck, Jane., and Colleen. Gau. Uplift : The Bra in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.
[23] Burstyn, Joan N. Past and Promise : Lives of New Jersey Women. (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1998), 388.
[24] “Camp Lewis,” Boy Scouts of America Northern New Jersey Council, 2019, https://www.nnjbsa.org/camping/cub-scout-camp/camp-lewis/.
[25] “Rosenthal Dead; A Manufacturer.” The New York Times, 14 April 1958, p 25.
[26] “First Woman on Trade Trip To Russia Leaves Tomorrow” The New York Times, 4 July 1963, p 24.
[27] The National Cyclopædia of American Biography ( University of Michigan, 1977), 340.
