Etam Brand Guidelines: A 1916 Berlin Stocking Shop That Became a French Family Group

A stocking maker, a fabric and a shop in Berlin.

Etam is a French group with a German beginning. Max Lindemann, who had run a stocking works in Chemnitz, started his own business in Berlin in 1916, and took the name from étamine, the light open-weave fabric used in his undergarments. Both the Gale company history on Encyclopedia.com and French Wikipedia give that origin; French Wikipedia places the first shop, Strumpfhaus Etam, on the Friedrichstraße, and La Bible des Marques and a 2022 Sortiraparis article spell the founder’s name Lindermann. The group’s brand page today reads “French savoir-faire since 1916,” though the first French shop came twelve years after that date.

The early shops had a recognisable fit-out. The group’s own timeline says the first ones were lined from floor to ceiling with wooden lockers, with boxes that kept the goods out of sight. It says stockings in synthetic silk went into the window in the 1920s, and that Etam moved successfully into run-resistant lingerie in 1924.

Rather than risk his own money abroad, Gale says, Lindemann worked through local partners who developed the name in each market. A first London shop opened on Oxford Street in 1923, and a first Paris shop at 376 rue Saint-Honoré in 1928.

German business ended under the Nazis. French Wikipedia, citing a memorial biography of the manager of Etam’s Würzburg branch and a Humboldt University database, says the shops suffered from 1937 under the regime’s policy of forcing Jews out of business, that the company was liquidated in Germany in 1938, and that Lindemann moved its seat to France. La Bible des Marques gives the same account of 1938. The group’s timeline then records that its shops reopened in 1944, once Paris had been liberated.

The other half of the story is Belgian. Martin Milchior opened lingerie shops in Belgium in 1925 and in France in 1929. The chain became known as Setamil; French Wikipedia uses the name from the start, while Gale says it was adopted in 1941. A factory followed at Mouvaux, in the north of France, in 1936, according to French Wikipedia and Sortiraparis.

By the early 1960s his son Pierre Milchior led the company. Gale says he bought Elan, the parent of Etam France, in 1961, and agreed a merger with the Lindemann side in 1963, creating a chain of 49 shops under the Etam name, with Milchior as principal shareholder.

Hangers, boxes and shows.

Etam’s account of itself is a list of retail ideas, and most of the list comes from the group’s own timeline. It says Etam invented automatic stock replenishment in 1965, showed bras on hangers for the first time in 1970, brought jersey to nightwear in 1975, and in 1981 launched folded briefs sold in a box. La Bible des Marques gives the same hanger and box dates, and French Wikipedia lists them too, though these “firsts” rest mainly on the company’s word.

The group also built new names. It created 1.2.3 in 1983, aimed by Gale’s account at a higher-end clientele, and renamed it Maison 123 in 2019. Undiz, a younger lingerie brand, followed in 2007, and the group co-founded Livy with Lisa Chavy in 2017; it says it holds a minority stake. In July 2019, French Wikipedia says, it took a majority stake in the French lingerie label Ysé.

Designers and faces came later. French Wikipedia says Fifi Chachnil drew lingerie for Etam in 2006 and Lolita Lempicka a capsule collection the next year, and that the model Natalia Vodianova became the face of Etam Lingerie in 2008, later signing two collections. The first show came in 2008, the group says. French Wikipedia describes later shows as staged spectacles ahead of Paris Fashion Week, and the brand now reports its Live Show by guests, press and social reach. A first cruise show followed in Corsica in 2022.

Flagships have been part of the identity as well. French Wikipedia and La Bible des Marques describe “La Cité de la Femme,” opened on the rue de Rivoli in Paris in 2001, as a lingerie store of more than 4,000 square metres. Gale records that fire broke out during its renovation and delayed the opening by several months. In 2022 the Boulevard Haussmann flagship hosted a retrospective for France’s Heritage Days, Sortiraparis reported.

The brand’s current campaign language is “Feel free” and “Don’t compromise,” with the phrase “French Liberté.”

Packets, hangers and colour walls.

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.

Two decades on the stock market, then back to the family.

The Etam name did not move as one company. The British business grew separately under local partners, launching the Tammy label for girls in 1975 and going public in 1984, Gale says. The French group listed in Paris as Etam Développement in 1997 and bought its British cousin the following year, in a deal Gale says proved harder and costlier than expected. In 2005 the UK stores were sold to Arcadia and converted to its other outlets, according to English Wikipedia.

China followed a different path. The group’s timeline dates its entry to 1994, and French Wikipedia to 1995, and French Wikipedia says the country reached about 3,400 points of sale at one stage. A release from the adviser BDA Partners, dated 21 May 2018, announced the sale of Etam’s Chinese ready-to-wear operations to a Hong Kong-based investor; French Wikipedia gives 2017. In 2017 the family holding company also took the group off the stock market through a squeeze-out of minority shareholders, French Wikipedia reports, citing Le Figaro.

Today the company calls itself “familial et indépendant,” family-run and independent. Maddyness described Laurent Milchior as co-managing partner in 2024. The group lists 1,391 points of sale in 57 countries, with a registered office in Paris and administrative headquarters in Clichy. New markets include Mexico in 2022 and a first American store in Miami in 2023, French Wikipedia says.

Manufacturing is outsourced. Gale’s history, which runs to the early 2000s, records in-house design with production contracted out in France and Asia; French Wikipedia says production is mainly around the Mediterranean and in Asia, and that Etam Lingerie acknowledged at the end of 2020 that most of its pieces are made in China. In March 2025 the group said it would close its Tech Center at Marcq-en-Barœul, near Lille, where prototypes were made; the 55 staff protested, ICI reported that April. BFM reported on 28 March 2022 that Etam was keeping its shops in Russia open after the invasion of Ukraine. The group says it gained B Corp certification in 2026.

For a design guide, Etam shows how a name taken from a fabric can outlast its first company, its first country and two merged families. Compare Hunkemöller, an older Dutch chain, and Vanity Fair Lingerie, an American name with its own long history. For this guide we use a navy, an ecru and a coral with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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