Boom in Bustenhalter

On billboards, in magazines and on TV throughout West Germany, a stunning group of feline fraeuleins are selling lots of clothing by wearing practically none. The models are part of a $6,000,000-a-year advertising campaign that has helped make Munich's Triumph International the largest manufacturer of foundation garments in Europe. Half of all the bras and girdles sold in West Germany are made by Triumph in its 65 domestic plants, and the company satisfies a growing export market from 15 factories abroad. It plans to invade the U.S. next January. Volume has nearly quadrupled since 1958, and last week, in its semiannual report, the company said that sales are running at a yearly rate of $130 million, up 25% from 1964.

No Bones About It. Behind this Triumph is Executive Director Herbert Braun, 55, a shy and ascetic "Herr Doktor" (economics and social sciences), who seized the hardly new idea that bras and girdles should be attractive as well as functional. Braun hired Designer Heinrich Ernst Hoelscher in 1955 to re-engineer the company's products along lines that had already been adopted in the U.S. The men could do little to change the clumsy German name for the bra--Buestenhalter--but they did alter the garment itself. Out came deeply plunging bras made of stretchable synthetics with less padding and no old-fashioned bones; lighter, flower-patterned girdles; filmy nylon slips and translucent shortie pajamas. They instantly captivated Germany's willowy, style-conscious girls--to say nothing of their husbands. The synthetic stretch materials, says Braun, "gave us an entirely fresh conception of how to engineer the human form."

The old conception had been molded by Braun's grandfather, who helped found the company in 1886. Aiming at the overfed women of the Reich's middle class, he marketed corsets under such formidable names as "Colossus," "Hercules" and "Grenadier," the last with a whalebone skeleton guaranteed to be indestructible. When, in 1918. a flamboyant Parisian couturier named Paul Poiret launched an anti-corset crusade, Triumph faltered so badly that it had to take up the manufacture of toweling, a sideline that survives today.

Lots of Class. Lately, the firm has branched into sportswear as well as lingerie, but bras and girdles are still the foundation of its business. In keeping with the shape and mood of the times, Triumph calls its sportswear by such names as "Caprice" and "Swing-times," and its lingerie "Jolly," "Amourette" and "Poesie." Braun applauds Rudi Gernreich as a pacemaker, but has yet to try the topless approach.

The Herr Doktor has made Triumph as successful with its 18,400 employees as with its customers. For promising personnel there is a company school that provides a year's free instruction in executive skills; in 1964 it graduated 700 Triumph management trainees. It is known within the company as "the bra academy."

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