Danskin History
Earlier company descriptions, brand line-ups, store counts and photographs from the history of Danskin, kept for historical reference.
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The Company Description of Its Time
Danskin is filed in its original Apparel Search profile as a brand with a long, specific claim: since 1882, the Danskin brand has proudly been synonymous with femininity, innovation, quality and superior comfort and fit. It started out as a family owned business that catered to New York City's dancers, selling tights, tutus and leotards, and soon became the standard for dancers across the USA. The profile's present-day summary keeps the same emphasis: today Danskin enjoys status as the ultimate female active brand, both nationally and internationally, and the label has evolved with women's lifestyles for over 125 years to create dancewear, active wear and casual clothes, as well as fitness equipment including weights, toning balls and yoga mats.
Firsts: Nylon Bodywear, Knit Tights and the Bodysuit
The innovation record is the heart of this filing, and it is a record of firsts. Danskin is credited with producing the first nylon bodywear in the 1950s. Continuing its dance world contributions, the brand set the standard with the first knit-tights and leotards, and introduced fishnet stockings and the 'Ballet Pink' and 'Theatrical Pink' colored tights - names any dance student still recognises, preserved here exactly as the historical record states them. Each first solved a working dancer's problem: stretch and recovery in bodywear, a knitted tight that moved with the leg, and stage pinks matched to the theatre rather than the street.
The expansion beyond the studio is dated just as precisely. In the late 1960s, the company expanded beyond a market that consisted of dancers, gymnasts and skaters when it marketed its first product designed for street wear by the general female public: adding convenient snaps to a conventional dance leotard and updating the styling to make it more fashionable, the bodysuit was born. That single adaptation - a dancer's garment re-cut for everyday wear - is the moment the original identifies as the start of Danskin's broader consumer market, and it explains the brand's later shape: activity-appropriate fitness, yoga, dance, gymnastics and casual wear, all descended from studio clothing.
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