One of America’s premier bra brands, Bali has offered up women’s flirty intimates for nearly a century. The New York-based company designed and manufactured everything from girdles and garter belts to contemporary shapewear. Usually sold in department stores, Bali was known for impeccable construction, lush materials, and innovative designs. The company’s collaboration with Target—called “Beauty by Bali”—was extremely successful with fans. Still one of the top five brassiere labels in the country, Bali continues to offer beautiful, well-crafted intimates for women of all shapes and sizes.

Founded in 1927 in Brooklyn, New York, Bali was the brainchild of a young seamstress named Sara Stein, a worker at a bra manufacturer in the city. During the peak flapper era, bras were fashioned to flatten a woman’s chest, not enhance her figure. Stein imagined a more comfortable bra that accepted and supported a woman’s body—whether big or small. She began sewing prototypes inside her apartment. Her husband, Sam Stein, who worked in sales, spent his downtime upselling the benefits of his wife’s comfortable bras within New York City’s famous garment district. 

Called “Fay-Miss”—a.k.a. “famous”—the new brand flourished its first year, banking the Steins $10,000—a fortune in the late 1920s. For the next several years, Sara and her newly-hired team continued to create shape-friendly bras in various materials like silk and satin. In 1935, the couple changed the brand name to Bali Brassiere Company, as it sounded more exotic with sexy undertones. What set the brand apart from others like it was Sara’s obsessive devotion to comfortable styles and fits, regardless of the manufacturing price. 

By the 1940s, the Steins were famous within the women’s undergarment industry. Two of their most significant contributions were the first bias cups and the first all-cotton bra. 

 When the couple eventually retired in 1969, the Hanes Corporation bought the foundations brand. For the next fifty years, Bali continued to introduce every conceivable style, type, and color of bra, as well as a variety of panties, shapewear, hosiery, sleepwear, and negligees. The brand offered wireless, seamless, and underwired bras. Bali was sold in virtually every mid-level to high-end department store—everything from Kohl’s to Saks Fifth Avenue. In the 2010s, a lower-cost collaboration with Target called “Beauty by Bali” was incredibly well received by the public. 

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Bali undergarments can be identified by a generous use of satin and lace. Some of the brand’s biggest sellers are bras, girdles, and shapewear. The company’s preferred materials include nylon, Lycra, satin, polyester, rayon, spandex, cotton, and lace.  

Bali apparel comprises underwear, boy shorts, slips, girdles, body shapers, camisoles, teddies, garter belts, hosiery, robes, and pajamas. Bra styles include T-shirt, bralette, racerback, push-up, strapless, bullet, bustier, nursing, training, sports, girdle, minimizer, and bow. Special collections include “Beauty by Bali,” “Pretty Bali,” and “Bali Studio.”

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Books and Periodicals

Jiggle: (Re)shaping American Women by Wendy Burns-Ardolino. 

Unmentionables: A Brief History of Underwear by Elaine Benson and John Esten. 

Uplift: The Bra in America by Jane Farrell-Beck and Colleen Gau.

Web Resources

Bali www.vintagefashionguild.org.

Bali Bras, Panties, & Shapewear for Women www.freshpair.com.

Bali Intimates History www.hosieryandmore.com.