Berlei, Sarong, Little X & Magic Cross

Montgomery Ward ad.

Date unknown

I believe that Sarong was an American product, and that the Berlei Sarong was made under license to the American company.

To confuse things further the American firm Bestform introduced an almost identical garment, which they sold under the name Flirtation Walk. The Sarong company sued Bestform for infringement of copyright, but presumably the case was settled, as both products continued to be sold.

Berlei continued to sell the Sarong range in Australia until at least 1980, but in England it replaced it with the gaySlant range in 1964. I suspect that they did this because of some dispute over the license agreement, as it used a slightly different construction arrangement. The two construction methods appear to me, as an engineer, to be functionally identical, but the revised construction is presumably sufficiently different to avoid infringing the original patent.

It is, however, very similar to the Silhouette Little X, which was the subject of a spectacularly successful TV advertising campaign in England in the mid-fifties. I can only assume that Silhouette were no longer selling this range.

Little X Campaign

Also, as an engineer, the claims made for the Sarong design seem to me to be extremely dubious, and even more so when incorporated in a pantygirdle. I strongly suspect that the primary advantage of the design was that it enabled the company to obtain a patent, upon which the marketers could hang their hype.

Berlei Gay Slant

1965

This confused picture became even more confused when I found the advertisement above in my files. This image is taken from a Montgomery Ward catalogue, probably from the big sixties. Although the garment on the left, which is described as a ‘Carol Brent Cross-over girdle’, is almost identical with the original Sarong girdle, it is in fact a Bestform Flirtation Walk.

Original Bestform Flirtation Walk

(from eBay)

Original Bestform girdle >>

The garment on the right in the Montgomery Ward ad, which is described as a ‘Magic Cross’ girdle, appears to be identical with the original Silhouette ‘Little X’, shown below right. Carol Brent was the Montgomery Ward house brand, which they applied to garments made to them to special order. To make matters even more confusing the name Magic Cross seemed familiar, and eventually I found the advertisement below left for a fairly similar Playtex pantygirdle, probably dating from the seventies.