Aubade Brand Guidelines: The 1958 French Lingerie Label Built on an 1875 Corset Maker

A corset factory, a family and a dawn song.

Aubade is a younger name on an older business. The company’s own history says a Doctor Bernard founded a corset factory in 1875, later acquired by the Pasquier family. French Wikipedia adds that the firm, Bernard et Cie, made orthopaedic girdles and corsets sold under the name Prégermain. Sources differ on the buyer: French Wikipedia says Etienne Pasquier, in the 1920s, while the reference site La Bible des Marques says Jean Pasquier, in 1920. Both name his son, Claude Pasquier, as the person who launched the Aubade label in 1958.

The word comes from music: French Wikipedia defines an aubade as a composition performed at dawn beneath someone’s windows. The company presents the 1958 launch as a move away from purely functional underwear, and French Wikipedia describes the same change of direction.

Aubade says it was the first lingerie brand to coordinate colour between tops and bottoms, and that collections then began to follow fashion and the seasons. La Bible des Marques dates coloured, patterned collections and coordinated sets to 1963. French Wikipedia says the same decade brought sewing workshops at La Trimouille in the Vienne department, then factories at Saint-Savin, with about fifty people from 1963.

The 1970s added construction ideas. The company lists strapless and backless designs, a “heart clasp” and a front-fastening bra as its own innovations; French Wikipedia dates the backless, strapless bra to 1972 and the front fastening to two years later. Those firsts are the company’s claims. The tanga is dated differently too: Aubade places it in the 1980s and La Bible des Marques in 1975.

Black and white, no faces, 183 lessons.

The company tells its own history largely through its advertising. French Wikipedia says its 1968 advertisements caused a scandal, and that the 1980s campaign “Aubade pour un homme” now looks rather sexist. The company says black-and-white images became its signature in the 1980s.

The year 1993 is the one La Bible des Marques gives for both the Bahia collection, trimmed with broderie anglaise, and the first “Leçons de séduction” campaign. The company calls the first lessons a turning point, shot in black and white, and counts 183 of them over more than 25 years. A calendar followed in 1998, French Wikipedia says.

In June 2017 FashionNetwork reported a change: the black-and-white, faceless visual code would stay, but the lessons would give way to a single line, “Parlez-vous Aubade ?”, for use in every market. Martina Brown, then deputy managing director, called it a universal phrase that let the brand claim its Frenchness. The same report described a new shop concept, modelled on a warm Haussmann apartment, to start in Paris and spread across a network of 54 branded stores.

In January 2024 FashionNetwork reported that the brand platform had been rewritten, with the consultancy Martine Leherpeur Conseil, around the slogan “Live your desire.” Samar Vignals, then brand and product director, said that since the previous spring the woman in the campaigns was “no longer an object but a subject” (our translation); the report noted that the label had long relied on close-ups and striking lines.

The visual identity followed. Aubade says that in 2026 it reworked its image around its Parisian roots, with “a refined couture logo, an iconic monogram and a calligraphic silhouette” accompanying the slogan. Calida’s 2025 annual report, as quoted by Body Magazine, says Aubade “set the course for a re-branding” in its twentieth year in the group, with Claire Masson as the new general manager.

The range has widened alongside the image. Swimwear reached boutiques in 2006, the company says, though French Wikipedia dates beachwear to 2003. Stockings and tights arrived in 2009, according to French Wikipedia, and Aubade Men in 2013.

Lace, boxes and the trade floor.

Many lingerie houses present themselves through material first. Close-up photographs of lace, ribbon and stitching run across the category, and the trade sorts itself in the same terms: Interfilière Paris, the show for suppliers, listed fabrics, lace, embroidery, accessories and textile designers among its sectors in a press release of November 2023, with nearly 170 exhibiting suppliers expected.

Behind the photographs sits the workroom: pattern cards, cutting tables and sample rails. Wacoal says its first bra began with a paper pattern, and The Underpinnings Museum, an online collection of dated garments, publishes a pattern library beside its catalogue entries, which record fabric, origin and construction piece by piece.

The shop counts for as much as the cloth. Wacoal says it opened its first department-store underwear counter at the Kyoto branch of Takashimaya in 1950, while Agent Provocateur’s first shop, opened in 1994 on Broadwick Street in London’s Soho, still carried its seasonal windows in February 2026, FashionUnited reported. Boxes and ribbon finish the sale in many houses, and ribbon can be part of the product too: the museum names satin ribbon-slot lace trim and bows as signature details of many early Agent Provocateur designs.

The trade meets in France. The Salon International de la Lingerie and Interfilière Paris, organised by Eurovet, marked sixty years since the Salon’s first edition at Paris Porte de Versailles in January 2024, with nearly 250 brands expected at the Salon, according to the press release.

A Swiss owner and a move to Tunisia.

The family sold in 2005. Calida’s announcement, carried by Pambianco News on 29 April 2005, said Aubade was in the third generation of Pasquier ownership and that Calida Holding of Switzerland would take it over, with Ann-Charlotte Pasquier staying as managing director. The deal also took in Aubade’s most significant outside supplier in Tunisia, to secure the supply chain.

Tunisia was already part of the story: French Wikipedia dates the move of some production to Ksar Hellal to 1995. After the sale the Vienne plants shrank. In the French National Assembly in July 2009, the deputy Jean-Michel Clément said that eighteen months after the purchase a redundancy plan had removed one of the two Vienne sites, with 140 dismissals. The minister answering, Hervé Novelli, gave 142 jobs lost when part of production moved to Tunisia, and confirmed that the management had announced on 16 June 2009 the removal of 104 of the 132 jobs at Saint-Savin. Workers demonstrated outside the Assembly that day, the deputy said. French Wikipedia names La Trimouille as the closed site and says the 2009 plan was first annulled by the administrative court in Poitiers, with the staff dismissed that December.

Calida has since narrowed its portfolio. It sold Lafuma Mobilier to Peugeot Frères Industrie in summer 2024, FashionUnited reported, and on 23 July 2026 agreed to sell Cosabella to Crown Brands Group, to focus on its core brands. The Calida Group now describes itself as made up of Calida and Aubade; its shares trade on the SIX Swiss Exchange. In January 2024 FashionNetwork reported that France remained Aubade’s largest market, ahead of Germany and the Benelux countries, with a US subsidiary since 2022, 43 boutiques in France, 11 factory shops and stores in Brussels, Geneva and Zurich.

For a design guide, Aubade shows how a single campaign device, held for more than 25 years, can define a label, and how that label then moves on from it. Compare Calida, its Swiss sister brand, and Simone Pérèle, another French corsetry house that replaced a long-held brand sign. For this guide we use ink, ivory and an oxblood with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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