Wolford: more than 75 years of Austrian hosiery

September 2025. To mark its 75th anniversary, Wolford took photographer Camila Falquez to Sicily with a cast of women of different ages and backgrounds, linked by a long length of fabric caught in the wind. The campaign, The Thread of Attitude, launched alongside a special edition of the house's turtleneck bodysuit, made for the first time in merino wool and priced at 325 euros. Behind the celebration, though, was a company WWD described as going through a "seismic shift". To understand how it got there, you have to go back to the Austrian shore of Lake Constance, where it all began with silk stockings.

1949 or 1950?

Both dates circulate, and both are right. In 1949, in Bregenz, the Vorarlberg industrialist Reinhold Wolff and the Viennese retail entrepreneur Walter Palmers founded Wolff & Co. KG to make women's stockings in real and artificial silk. The Austrian magazine Cover told the story in 2017, and the date also appears in the catalogue entry of the Victoria and Albert Museum, which describes Wolford as a company "founded in 1949". A year later, Cover says, the business was renamed Wolford.

The brand itself uses 1950. It is the date on its corporate and retail websites, and the one it counted from for the 75th anniversary celebrated in 2025. In short: the company dates from 1949, the name Wolford from 1950. That name, the company explains, is a portmanteau of the founder's surname, Wolff, and the city of Oxford.

Technique mattered from the start. According to Cover, the founders adapted second-hand American cotton machines to their own standards and for the first time knitted polyamide fibre into stockings. The brand credits its rise to a circular-knitting technology developed and refined in-house.

Inventing a second skin

Wolford's history reads better through its products than its campaigns. On its corporate website the company lists its milestones:

• 1977, Miss Wolford: "the first transparent shaping tights".
• 1988, Satin Touch: the satin-finish tights still in production. In the 1980s, the brand says, it began repositioning itself in luxury.
• 1992: "the first seamless Body".
• 2014, Pure 50: seamless tights designed to stay invisible under close-fitting clothes.
• 2016, Comfort Cut: tights with an adjustable waist.

On 14 February 1995 Wolford floated on the Vienna and Paris stock exchanges with what Cover recalls as the "Lady-Aktie", the ladies' share.

Two years later came the object that best explains the brand's thinking. In 1997 Wolford commissioned Philippe Starck to design an all-in-one dress: StarckNaked, now in the V&A's collection. It joins opaque tights, via a thick waistband, to a long tube of stretch fabric that can be worn as a skirt, a tube dress or a strappy dress, lengthened or gathered at will. The same shape-shifting idea returns in the Fatal, the tube dress in "iconic, mat velvet circular knit" that you can wear full length, fold into a skirt or roll down into a top. It is the piece that took Wolford out of the hosiery drawer and into the wardrobe.

In 2019, Wikipedia notes, the company earned Cradle to Cradle Gold certification for biodegradable and recyclable garments.

Photographers and designers

The brand's second engine is image. Wolford cites work with photographers including Helmut Newton and Ellen von Unwerth and with designers such as Karl Lagerfeld and Vivienne Westwood. When it announced its Emilio Pucci collaboration in 2004, WWD noted it had been making tights for Westwood since 2002 and for Lagerfeld Gallery since the previous year, and held a licence with Giorgio Armani. The Pucci capsule used Satin de Luxe, a shiny satin-finish nylon, in a floral and a geometric print: 4,000 pairs of tights and 2,000 bodysuits. "Legwear somehow embodies the Pucci style — it's close to the body, it's sexy and it's feminine," said Laudomia Pucci.

According to Cover, Missoni and Kenzo followed in 2006, and Valentino in 2007-08. The Mugler link runs twice: first in the 1980s with Thierry Mugler, then in September 2022 with Casey Cadwallader, whose twelve-piece capsule spanned bodysuits, dresses, gloves, leggings and cycling shorts, priced from 120 euros for tights to 800 for a catsuit. "Before I even set foot in Mugler's office, working with Wolford was on my to-do list," the designer said, adding that it had been "critical" for him to visit the factory. "Everyone looks good with hosiery, it's a universal lift, they work their magic whatever your size," he told WWD. Earlier that year GCDS had signed on, after Adidas, Amina Muaddi and Alberta Ferretti. In February 2024, at Milan Fashion Week, Marco De Vincenzo's Etro prints walked on Wolford bodysuits and leggings.

Collaborations barely move the numbers, though. In 2024, according to deputy CEO Marco Pozzo, fashion-forward products and capsules made up just 3 per cent of sales. Their job is to get the brand noticed.

Fosun, Lanvin Group and the turnaround

Since May 2018 the majority shareholder has been China's Fosun, with around 58 per cent according to Wikipedia. Fosun went on to found Lanvin Group, which brings together Lanvin, Wolford, Sergio Rossi and St. John Knits. In 2021 Wolford was the group's biggest brand, with sales of 109 million euros.

Then it stalled. In 2024, Pozzo told WWD in September 2025, sales fell to 88.4 million euros from 125.8 million in 2023, hit by problems across production, logistics and deliveries. "If we had more product, we would sell it right away," he said, insisting that "demand never dropped". In July 2025 the company completed a 25-million-euro capital increase. Since 1 March 2026 Pozzo has been CEO and chairman of the management board, charged with pushing the restructuring through.

The strategy leans on the Essentials, the timeless pieces that account for 70 per cent of the business. Creative director Nao Takekoshi wants to move "from making just great products to becoming a brand with a purpose". Collections are designed in Milan, but manufacturing stays in Europe, split between Bregenz and Murska Sobota in Slovenia. In the first half of 2025 Europe accounted for more than 60 per cent of sales, the US for 27 per cent and China for 8.5 per cent; its retail network, cut to 147 stores by June 2025 from 163 at the end of 2024 as non-strategic sites closed, generated 48 per cent of revenue and online 21 per cent. Accessories or menswear? Not yet. Takekoshi is wary: "I don't want to dilute the culture of offer that we have inherited for 75 years," he said.

How to choose your first Wolford

• Start with the classics. Satin Touch, made since 1988, is the easiest way to understand what sets a high-end tight apart. Individual 10, a sheer with double-entwined elastane and a near-invisible reinforced toe, is billed by the brand as "an all-rounder for different occasions".
• Take the size chart seriously. Luxury tights fit more precisely and less forgivingly: the wrong size wastes the price.
• Look beyond legwear. A bodysuit or a Fatal works as a real garment, under a jacket or with a skirt.
• Treat them as delicates. Hand wash or use a mesh bag, and skip the tumble dryer.

Seventy-five years on, the question for Wolford is not whether it can make a perfect pair of tights: its history answers that. It is whether it can get them into the right shop at the right time. For a house built on technical precision, it is a surprisingly practical challenge.