Natori Brand Guidelines: The Philippine Blouse That Became New York Sleepwear

A banker, a blouse and a buyer’s suggestion.

The Natori Company began in New York in 1977, and its founder came from finance rather than fashion. Josie Natori, born Josefina Almeda Cruz in Manila, moved to the United States in 1964 to study at Manhattanville College. English Wikipedia says she worked at the investment bank Bache & Co., opened a Manila office for it, and then moved to Merrill Lynch. In a New York Times piece of June 2009, quoted by Wikipedia, she said that after six years there she had become the first woman vice president in corporate finance and was bored.

Wikipedia says she considered a McDonald’s franchise and reproducing antique furniture before she settled on fashion. A Gale biography published on Encyclopedia.com says she first set up the company to import Philippine goods, from furniture to clothes. A friend sent an embroidered blouse as a sample, and a buyer at Bloomingdale’s suggested making it longer so that it could be sold as a nightshirt. The first order, that biography says, was for one thousand. She left banking in the spring of 1977 and, by the summer, had a line of sleepwear using Philippine fabrics and detail work.

She had no formal design training and could not sew, the biography says, so she hired an independent designer to turn her ideas into garments. She used her apartments in New York and Paris as showrooms in the early years. Wikipedia says the company had a 300-square-foot showroom in 1978 and 18,000 square feet by 1983.

Quality was the early challenge. Josie Natori flew to Manila to oversee it, and in 1979 the company gained better control over quality with its own sewing factory in the Philippines, built and run by her father. Tatler reported in 2017 that the political crisis of 1983 in the Philippines paralysed her operations for three months. In 1985 her husband, Kenneth Natori, left his Wall Street job to join the firm as chairman.

East-West, line by line.

Josie Natori has often described her business philosophy as an “East-West mix” of culture and design, Wikipedia says. Vogue Philippines put it the same way in November 2022, describing a label known for intimates and loungewear with an “East-meets-West” look: silk and velvet, kimonos and scarves, and handcrafted embroidery. The Gale biography quotes her telling Women’s Wear Daily that the whole trademark of Natori rests on craftsmanship from the Philippines.

From sleepwear the range widened steadily. The same biography lists pyjamas, robes, pants and tank tops in the 1990s; Josie Natori Couture, a collection of evening wear and dresses, in 1991; fashion jewellery in 1993; shoes in 1994; and scarves, handbags and belts between 1999 and 2002. The main label was split into a Black Label of silk and lace and a White Label of modern casual styles. In 1998 the Josie label was repositioned around contemporary prints and colours, and a Cruz line was aimed at a wider market.

Wikipedia adds a limited men’s line in 2006, a ready-to-wear line called Natorious in fall 2008, renamed Josie Natori in fall 2010, and a global fragrance licensing deal with Parlux signed in May 2008. The Lingerie Museum, in a profile updated in October 2026, lists the current labels as Natori, Josie Natori, Josie and N Natori. Lingerie Briefs, in February 2025, listed collections running from ready-to-wear and sleepwear to bedding, towels, legwear, rugs and fine jewellery.

Vogue Philippines reported in 2022 that the creative director Andrew Egan, who runs the branding and advertising agency CoolGraySeven, had worked with Josie Natori since 2003. He had charge of pamphlets, catalogues, social media and e-commerce, a role the article called “visual policing”: making sure that everything stayed true to the brand’s vision. “Although he has his own agency, he’s in the family,” she told the magazine.

Design and documentation.

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.

A New York house with its workrooms in the Philippines.

Natori is still described as a family business. Vogue Philippines called the label family-owned in November 2022, and Lingerie Briefs described it as a family-owned and operated business in February 2025. Wikipedia lists the company as private and based in New York.

The second generation joined in 2007. The Philippine Star reported in January 2016 that Josie Natori had promoted her son, Ken Natori, to president, with charge of finance and operations alongside e-commerce, licensing and PR and marketing. She said he had launched the company’s e-commerce. She stayed on as CEO and chief creative officer. The Daily Tribune of Manila still called her founder and CEO in December 2022, when the brand marked its 45th year at the Peninsula Manila with a presentation by Ballet Philippines. Ken Natori was named as president in the February 2025 interview.

The factory is central to the company’s story. Wikipedia says Josie Natori has put the share of products made in the Philippines at 70 percent. Tatler, visiting in 2017, described a main factory in the eastern part of Metro Manila, grown from one room to two buildings, with cutters, sewers, embroiderers and beadworkers on site and another factory planned at Antipolo. It reported that some garments were made in China, with the complex and delicate work done in the Philippines. “I’m proud to have grown a brand which translates ‘made in the Philippines’ into ‘excellence in quality,’” she said in Manila in 2022.

Honours have followed the same two countries. The Gale biography records the Galleon Award in 1988, presented by President Corazon Aquino. Wikipedia records the Order of Lakandula in March 2007, one of the highest civilian awards in the Philippines; the Peopling of America award from the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation in April 2007; and a Philippine stamp in 2021. Kent State University announced in February 2016 that she would join its Fashion School Hall of Fame that April. In November 2026 the company’s website was promoting a collaboration with the fashion label Johnny Was.

For a design guide, Natori shows how a house can make its place of manufacture part of its identity. Compare Cosabella, another lingerie brand built on a link to its founders’ home country, and Maidenform, an older American lingerie name. For this guide we use mulberry, jade and pale silk with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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