Clothes for the Mother-to-be

Until the early twentieth century, pregnancy was a hush-hush affair. Women generally did not go out in public once they began to show, and they altered their regular clothes to fit their changing bodies. A revolution in maternity wear began in 1904, thanks to a widowed New York dressmaker.

Lithuanian-born Lena Himmelstein immigrated to this country in 1895 as a teenager. Five years later she married David Bryant. After his untimely death, the young widow supported herself and her son with her skill as a dressmaker. By 1904 her business was so successful that she was able to open a shop. A bank officer completing an account application misunderstood her first name and wrote it as Lane. That is how the business became known as Lane Bryant.

Soon after the shop opened, a pregnant customer asked for a dress she could wear in public. It was a hit, and the shopkeeper began turning out the first commercially available maternity dresses. The store used a mail-order catalog to spread the word about its ready-made maternity wear. In 1911 Lane Bryant pioneered print ads for this once-taboo subject. The first ad appeared in the New York Herald, and the store’s complete stock of maternity dresses sold out within a day.

Here is an ad for Lane Bryant that appeared in the February 1, 1920, issue of Vogue. By this time, Lane Bryant was a chain with stores in five cities.

These days, Lane Bryant is known as a store for plus-size women. A website serves as the modern-day catalog.

I learned about Lane Bryant (nee Lena Himmelstein) on a Jane’s Walk led by Barry Judelman of Barry’s Harlem Tours. For more about Jane’s Walk, see my May 10, 2022, blog.