Doodles, Drafts, and Designs: Industrial Drawings from the Smithsonian

Sewing instruction card, 1958
Maidenform Co., New York, New York

The Maidenform bra was originally designed to enhance the look of custom-made dresses by Enid’s Frocks. Eventually the bras became so popular that dress production stopped altogether and shifted to full-scale brassiere manufacturing. By the 1950s, the family-owned firm was a pioneer in the mass production of brassieres and other undergarments. Cards like these outlined every step that a worker took to produce these complex constructions quickly and cheaply.