Playtex Women's Fashion Brand

Playtex is an American brand name for undergarments, baby products, gloves, feminine products and sunscreen. This page covers the apparel side of that record - bras, panties and shapewear - strictly as products: garment construction, fabrics, sizing, fit and care, with flat-lay product imagery only. Abram Nathaniel Spanel founded the International Latex Corporation in Rochester, New York in 1932 to produce latex products, such as bathing caps, swimwear and baby pants. The Playtex brand began in 1947, when International Latex Corporation created a division named Playtex to produce and sell latex products.

Two advertising firsts mark the brand's place in its category's history: Playtex was the first to advertise undergarments on national television in 1955, and the first to show a woman wearing only a bra from the waist-up in a commercial in 1977. Those dates belong to advertising history rather than to product design, and they stand as part of the factual record of a brand whose name became generic for its category in many households.

The Bra Lines, in Product Terms

Playtex-branded apparel products sold by Hanesbrands include bras, panties and shapewear. In addition to panties and shapewear, Playtex bra brands include: Cross Your Heart, Eighteen-hour bra, Playtex Secrets, Full support and Everyday basics. The company has been producing and marketing the Cross Your Heart bra since 1954 under the slogan that it 'lifts and separates', a phrase now well known in popular culture. The Eighteen Hour bra has been marketed on the premise of comfort since the 1970s.

Buy by line and by measurement. Cross Your Heart is the heritage support line, bought on band firmness, cup construction and strap adjustment; the Eighteen Hour line is bought on its stated premise - all-day comfort - so softness of band and cup fabrics and the absence of pressure points over long wear are its tests. Playtex Secrets, Full support and Everyday basics are compared on the same product criteria: support construction matched to the wearer's measured band and cup size, fabric hand, seam finishing against the skin, and elastic recovery after washing. Nursing bras in the range are described as designed to change with your shape and keep you cool and comfortable - judge them on adjustability and fabric breathability. Use Apparel Search's bra and underwear glossaries, linked from this page, for construction terms before comparing lines, and follow each garment's care label, since elastic life is the main determinant of a bra's useful life.

From Esmark to HanesBrands: The Corporate Record

Playtex was acquired by Esmark in 1975, and then by Beatrice Foods in 1985. A year later it was acquired for $1.25 billion and its cosmetics brands were sold to Revlon. In 1988, Playtex split into two companies, Playtex Apparel Inc. and Playtex Products LLC. Playtex Apparel was sold to Sara Lee in 1991, and to HanesBrands in 2007. That chain explains the present arrangement: the apparel name sits inside HanesBrands, whose own Apparel Search profile and women's Hanes brand page are linked from this page.

A Playtex bras retail page at onehanesplace.com is linked in References below. Founded as the International Latex Corporation in Rochester in 1932, a Playtex division from 1947, Cross Your Heart since 1954, and apparel with HanesBrands since 2007: Playtex is the P letter's heritage undergarment brand, bought - in strictly product terms - on measured fit, support construction and care, exactly as this page sets out.

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