The company is named for its founder and longtime president Frederick Mellinger, who conceived of his lingerie business while serving in the armed forces during World War II. In 1946, after his discharge, Mellinger established a mail-order undergarment operation in New York City. Known as Frederick’s of Fifth Avenue, his shop offered racy black bras and panties embellished with lace and appliqués.
Mellinger took his fancy foundations to more permissive California in 1947, changing the name of the catalog business to Frederick’s of Hollywood that same year. Tinseltown’s glitz and glamour provided the perfect backdrop for the groundbreaking retailer, and a parade of starlets and models provided a ready customer base.
Mellinger, who came to be known as “Mr. Frederick” among his clientele, soon began to specialize in figure-enhancing foundations and accessories. He designed and began selling the first push-up bra, dubbed the “Rising Star,” in 1948. Fanny pads, girdles, sky-high heeled shoes, hosiery, wigs, false eyelashes, even head pads to achieve the illusion of height–anything necessary to achieve “Frederick’s figure balancing act”–followed in the years to come. The company even offered an inflatable bra that came complete with a “free straw.” The catalogs and stores later added glamorous evening wear, much of it designed by Mr. Frederick himself. The garments featured daring necklines, high slits, and sheer fabrics intended to appeal to men as much as women. In fact, Mellinger once wrote that his goal was to offer “the most alluring, body-hugging, figure-enhancing outer fashions … always aimed at men.”
Mr. Frederick opened his first retail store in California in 1952 and others soon followed. The flamboyant Art Deco flagship store soon became known as “the purple palace.” Mellinger started advertising his catalog and garments in nationally circulated magazines using saucy tag lines such as “Fashions Change–But Sex Is Always in Style.” It was Frederick’s that brought French bikinis to the United States during the 1950s. After incorporating in 1962, Frederick’s continued to expand its product offerings in the sexually permissive environment of the 1960s and 1970s. Soon pasties, anonymously written sexual guides, and other “sexually oriented non-apparel products” appeared in the catalogs.
Although Frederick’s offered its stock to the public in 1972, the Mellinger family continued to control a majority of the company’s stock through the early 1990s. By the end of the 1970s, the chain had expanded to more than 150 stores, accounting for over half of overall sales. The company enjoyed peak prosperity during the mid-1970s. Sales more than doubled, from $9.7 million in 1971 to $24 million in 1976, while net income tripled, from slightly less than $500,000 to $1.5 million. It was to be Frederick’s highest-ever level of profitability, as a combination of societal changes and management problems converged on the lingerie retailer.
Americans’ sexual mores and their tastes in lingerie grew increasingly conservative in the 1980s. The septuagenarian founder and his management team, however, were slow to realize these trends. (Unbeknownst to the board of directors, in fact, Mellinger was afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease during this time.) While company sales rose from $39.3 million in 1981 to $45.3 million in 1984, net profits slid from a high of $2.2 million to $627,000. This dramatic decline in profitability was reflected in the company’s eroding stock price, which dropped from $7 per share in mid-1983 to less than $2 by mid-1985. By the time Mellinger retired in September 1984, his company had experienced its first-ever loss, a $148,000 shortfall on sales of about $45 million. In 1985, Forbes magazine’s Ellen Paris speculated that Frederick’s dip into the red meant that sex must be “going out of style.” Nevertheless, when Mellinger died in 1990 at the age of 76, he was praised as a brave pioneer of intimate fashions and groundbreaking foundations.
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