SPANX Brand Guidelines: Footless Pantyhose and a Red Pack in a Beige Aisle

A fax saleswoman, a pair of pantyhose and a North Carolina mill.

SPANX was founded in Atlanta in 2000 by Sara Blakely, who was then selling fax machines door to door for the office supplier Danka. The company dates the idea two years earlier. Its website says that in 1998 Blakely, getting ready for a party, could not find the right undergarment for white trousers and cut the feet off a pair of control-top pantyhose. Two years and many prototypes later, it says, SPANX launched. The International Directory of Company Histories tells the same story with cream trousers and open-toed shoes.

The idea became a patent before it became a product. The Atlanta news site Rough Draft reported in 2021 that Blakely started the business with her savings and wrote her own patent. The Directory says she researched pantyhose patents at the Georgia Tech library and worked from a spare bedroom. English Wikipedia says she paid a patent attorney to finish the application, and records that she bought the trademark online through the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The name was chosen by ear. Blakely wanted the hard “k” sound she heard in Coca-Cola and Kodak, settled on “Spanks,” and changed the spelling after reading that made-up words worked better as trade names, English Wikipedia and the Directory both say.

Making the garment took longer. Blakely drove around North Carolina, home to most American hosiery mills, English Wikipedia says, and was turned away. Sources differ on who said yes. The Directory names Samuel Kaplan of Highland Mills in Charlotte; English Wikipedia describes a mill operator in Asheboro. Both say the mill owner’s daughters changed his mind. The prototype took about a year, and the result was named Spanx Footless Bodyshaping Pantyhose.

Selling followed quickly. In July 2000 Blakely approached a buyer at Neiman Marcus, demonstrated the product in person and got a test in seven stores, the Directory says. By the autumn the brand had reached Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s, Lord & Taylor and Bergdorf Goodman. In November 2000 it appeared in Oprah Winfrey’s “Favorite Things,” and in May 2001 Blakely went on the shopping channel QVC.

Three drawn figures and a colour with a name.

The packaging was settled before the first sale. The Directory says Blakely studied hosiery packaging and found gray and beige the usual colours, with photographs of women in underwear. She chose a vibrant red instead, and had a graphic designer friend draw colourful illustrations of three fully clothed women in different stances. SPANX tells the same story in its own words: in a “beige-dominated hosiery aisle,” it says, the red packaging was impossible to miss, intentionally so.

Placement got the same attention. English Wikipedia says Blakely preferred to see the product alongside shoes rather than in the hosiery section.

Tone did similar work. The Directory records a brash, comic style in product names and taglines, and early ranges carried joking titles such as Power Panties, Hide & Sleek and Bra-lleluja. The same source says Blakely had worked as a stand-up comic while developing the idea.

The red has since been formalised. On 3 November 2025 NewBeauty reported that SPANX and the Pantone Color Institute had named a signature shade, SPANX Red, for the company’s 25th anniversary. Laurie Pressman of Pantone called it “warm and full-bodied with a hint of yellow.” Katie Weeks, the brand’s senior vice president of brand marketing, said red had been “a hallmark of our brand since day one.” Pantone and SPANX also worked with Copenhagen Design on a three-piece capsule of a thermos, an umbrella and a shopping bag, and SPANX issued a red anniversary clothing collection.

Museums have taken note. English Wikipedia says the OnCore high-waisted mid-thigh short has been in the design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 2017, and that SPANX and Blakely were included in the 2025 exhibition Pirouette: Turning Points in Design. The Boston Globe singled out the brand and Blakely in its review of that show in July 2025.

How legwear presents itself.

Hosiery and high-street lingerie are sold at close quarters. A pair of tights is usually bought in a flat packet or from a hanger, a bra from a rail and a vest from a folded stack, so much of the design work falls on the things around the garment: the pack, the hook, the shelf and the shop front. Type on a legwear packet has a practical job to do, since it has to carry a name, a style and a size in a small space.

Retail shapes the look as much as print does. Some names in this field are found mainly in their own shops, often in shopping malls and on high streets, where the shop front is the largest sign the brand has. Oniverse, the Italian group behind Calzedonia and Intimissimi, says it sells its collections exclusively through single-brand stores. Others reach customers through department stores, or as a concession inside another retailer: in 2005 the trade paper TextilWirtschaft reported Intimissimi shop-in-shops opening inside Victoria’s Secret in the United States.

Colour is often seasonal. A wall of tights or swimwear arranged by shade can work as display and stock at once, and a change of season can change the look of a shop without touching its fittings. Plain folded basics pull the other way, relying on cut, material and label rather than pattern, so that the same shop can hold both a bright display and a quiet one.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, who owns it and what it says about where its products are made, with the company’s own claims marked as such. The palettes and specimens here are our own.

From a spare bedroom to a change of owner.

The business grew out of the bedroom in stages. The Directory says Blakely moved to an office in Decatur, Georgia, in 2001 and on to Buckhead in Atlanta. Laurie Ann Goldman, formerly of Coca-Cola, became chief executive in 2002 and stayed until 2014, with Blakely concentrating on product and marketing. The brand reached Britain in 2003 through Harrods, Selfridges and Harvey Nichols, the same source says, and produced a lower-priced line called Assets for Target.

The range then moved well beyond hosiery. English Wikipedia says the first SPANX store opened in 2012 and that denim followed in 2014, the year Jan Singer, previously of Nike, became chief executive. In late 2023 FashionUnited reported pop-up retail spaces in the United States and a first apparel pop-up in Britain. In 2025 it reported denim made with Lycra FitSense in January, a shapewear collection in Supima cotton in February and a capsule with the wellness brand Bala in August. English Wikipedia now lists activewear, apparel, denim, swimwear, intimates, leggings and hosiery as well as shapewear.

Ownership has changed twice in five years. On 20 October 2021 Blackstone announced it was buying a majority stake, with Blakely keeping a significant holding and becoming executive chairwoman. Rough Draft reported that existing management would continue to run the business and that the companies planned an all-female board. Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Whitney Wolfe Herd also invested, FashionUnited reported that November. The chief executive’s post then moved quickly: Kim Jones was promoted in September 2022 and left in July 2023, and Caroline “Cricket” Whitton was appointed in February 2024, with Jeanne Jackson as executive chair, Retail Dive and the company’s announcement said.

In July 2026 Puck reported that Blackstone had sold its majority stake in June to HPS Investment Partners, the private credit lender owned by BlackRock, which had provided debt financing to SPANX in 2021; Dealbreaker carried the same account. Puck said Blakely had also left the board, and named Robert Trauber, who joined in May 2026 from Johnny Was, as chief executive. Blakely launched a separate footwear brand, Sneex, in 2024, English Wikipedia says. In 2021 Rough Draft placed the headquarters at the Buckhead Village development in Atlanta.

For a design guide, SPANX shows how one colour choice made against a shelf can outlast several owners and chief executives, and end up with a name of its own. Compare SKIMS, a later shapewear label, and Maidenform, an older American underwear name. For this guide we use a brick red, ink and a shelf beige with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep SPANX’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.