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Chapter Four, part two,
follows Dupont’s pursuit of
the perfect stretch fiber for
girdles. Lycra was invented
for this purpose, and was
launched in 1959 after
twenty years of research,
but within a short time,
sales of the new Lycra girdles
plummeted – why?
©2011Taylor and Francis
Before Lycra
• Before Lycra, girdles were made of rubberized thread – thread
covered with natural rubber – which was stiff, very
uncomfortable to wear, difficult to clean, and tended to
deteriorate when it came into contact with body oils,
perspiration, sunlight and detergent.
• Since every woman brought and wore girdles, the potential
market for a producer who could devise a superior stretch
fiber made of synthetic rubber to use in foundation garments
was enormous, and in casting around for new needs to fill,
nothing could have seemed more certain to Dupont than the
girdle.
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
• As described in Lycra: How a Fiber Shaped
America, Dupont spent twenty years and the
unprecedented sum of $10,000,000 on
developing a synthetic fiber to replace rubber, in
a trajectory that stretched from the laboratories
where scientists worked on the technologically
challenging properties of ‘stretch’ to the long
process of producing machinery to mass produce
the new fiber, and then testing and sampling trial
girdles made of the new fiber under conditions of
strict secrecy.
•
©2011 Taylor and Francis
Launching Lycra
• On the morning of October 28, 1959, the world’s fashion and
trade press, along with leading manufacturers of foundation
garments, textiles and clothing, gathered at the Empire State
Building on Fifth Avenue in New York City, for Dupont’s launch
of its new stretch fiber called ‘Lycra’.
• Lycra, Dupont revealed, was an elastomeric fiber that
stretched and snapped back into place like rubber, but unlike
rubber was resistant to deterioration caused by perspiration,
cosmetic oils and lotions. It could be dyed, machine washed
and machine dried. Although Lycra was much lighter than
rubberised elastic thread, it had two to three times as much
restraining power, and would be used to make girdles that
were light, soft and sheer while providing the same figure
control provided by bulkier foundations.
©2011 Taylor and Francis
• Expectations for the new fiber ran high, and the
Wilmington Morning News ran a banner headline:
‘New Du Pont Fiber Could “Girdle” World – One Day.’
• Dupont hoped that Lycra would bring about as great
a change in the women’s foundation garment
industry as nylon had in the hosiery industry. And it
did, although it is doubtful if anyone in that room on
the day that Lycra was launched could have foreseen
quite how that would come about.
©2011TaylorandFrancis
Promoting Lycra
Dupont launched Lycra with an unprecedented
publicity campaign, involving advertising in all
the top women’s magazines, press releases,
in-store promotions, and the re-training of
sales staff, described in detail in Lycra: How a
Fiber Shaped America.
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
The ‘At Last’ campaign
One of the advertising campaigns for Lycra was based on the
theme ‘At Last’, describing all the things women could do in
the new girdles of Lycra, that they hadn’t been able to do
before. Some of the lines from the campaign were:
• At last, a girdle that let’s you golf, bowl, ski – do any sport in
utter comfort!
• At last, a girdle that lets you breathe – even after shrimp,
steak, French fries, parfait and coffee!
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
‘What women want’
Before developing and launching Lycra, Dupont had
conducted intensive market research about what
women wanted from girdles., Women had told them
that they wanted girdles that comfort, coolness, firm
support, softness, ease of washing, contoured
tailoring, fast drying and shape retention. The
company was justifiably proud that they had ‘given
women what they wanted’. But which ‘women’?
© 2011Taylor and Francis
Signs of change
• In 1959, as Lycra was being readied for the market,
Dupont considered the demographic projections for
the coming 1960’s.
• One of the company’ economists noted that, due to
the fact that the babyboom babies were growing up,
teenagers were going to exert a powerful influence in
the marketplace. Teenagers were emerging as a new
group of consumers who made their own purchasing
decisions.
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
Although they developed new
products for teenagers, most
producers, Dupont had
assumed that when the
Babyboomers grew up they
would want what their
mothers wanted. Yet even
before Lycra was launched,
there were signs that the
women’s market that had
remained stable for so long
was beginning to change.
©2011 Taylor and Francis
• The first signs of change came in hosiery. Like girdles
and other foundations, the wearing of women’s
stockings had long been considered obligatory. While
sales of nylon stockings had boomed again after the
wear, by 1955 hosiery manufacturers and retailers,
key customers for Dupont’s nylon, began to notice a
decline in sales.
• Particularly worrying was that teenage girls aged 12
to 15 – the consumers of the future – were resisting
buying and wearing stockings.
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
• Although the numbers of women in the population
arriving at the age of girdle-wearing continued to rise
dramatically year by year following Lycra’s launch
due to the maturing of the baby boomers, the sales
of girdles of all kinds began to fall.
• As with hosiery, girls aged 12 to 15 and young
women were emerging as the main group of girdleresisters, and the trend was spreading to other age
groups.
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
Anthropological cohort theory
• ‘Cohort Theory’ was first developed by anthropologists
working on traditional societies organised into ‘age grades’
such as youths, warriors and elders. Later the concept it was
refined into an analytical tool based on the principle that
different cohorts are affected in a unique way by historical
events, and have their own ‘cohort culture’ and distinctive
characteristics.
• Recommended reading: Ortner, Sherry 1999. Generation X:
Anthropology in a Media-Saturated World, Santa Fe, School of
American Research Press.
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
Cohort marketing
• The realization that the babyboomer cohort was
different, not only in size but also in culture and
consumption patterns, led to the development of
‘generational’ or ‘cohort’ marketing, based on age
and cohort characteristics, the beginning of the niche
marketing that dominates production and
consumption today.
• So what were the cohort characteristics of the
babyboomers?
©2011Taylor and Francis
Boomer cohort characteristics
• First – the glorification of youth, and the
emergence of youth culture.
• Second - in this revolutionary time of the Civil
Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, Women’s
Lib, the birth control pill, rock and roll,
psychedelia, the Watts riots and much more,
they wanted nothing to do with the past.
Everything had to be new and different –
Burn, baby, burn.
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
Bra-burning: an urban myth
Bra-burning is always cited as the great symbolic event of the
period, but no Boomer woman I spoke to had ever burned or,
or personally witnessed one being burned by others. Indeed,
brassiere sales continued to rise throughout the 1960’s and
1970’s in proportion to population growth.
But if bra-burning was something of an urban myth, the
abandoning of girdles was not, and every Boomer woman I
encountered had something to say about it. ‘Getting rid of the
girdle’ emerged as a significant cultural moment, in every
sense a defining act of ‘emancipation’ and ‘liberation’.
2011 Taylor and Francis
As described in detail in Lycra: How a Fiber Shaped America,
Dupont mounted a long and intensive campaign to ‘save’ the
girdle. From the company’s point of view, the abandoning of
the girdle was mystifying - they had given women ‘what they
wanted’, girdles made of Lycra that were as light and supple as
a second skin. Dupont conducted intensive market research,
advertising and in-store promotions, and developed a whole
range of full-body Lycra ‘shapers’ that looked nothing like
traditional girdles, but the young Boomers wouldn’t buy
them, nor would their mothers.
By the late 1970’s, the traditional girdle was virtually dead, a
victim of social, political, economic and demographic change.
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS – CHAPTER FOUR/2
1) How would you design and write an advertising campaign
promoting girdles in the context of the norms and values of
1950’s America?
2)Could you write that kind of advertisement today, and if not,
why not.
3) What are some examples of contemporary cohort marketing
(products aimed at particular groups)? For example, hair dye
for people who are beginning to go grey?
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
4) In 1950s America, mothers considered it their ‘duty’
to put their daughters into girdles when they were
still in junior high or high school. Why do you think
they thought this?
5) The decline of the girdle shows that all cohorts are
not the same, and that social change can transform
the market for certain products. Can you think of
other once-popular products and practices that have
declined or disappeared due to social change?
© 2011 Taylor and Francis