SARA BLAKELY / THE INSPIRATION SERIES
An everyday detail.
An extraordinary amount
of attention.
On Spanx, the people inside a product, and making success useful.
By Rob Urban
A pair of scissors makes a wonderful beginning to this story. The part I keep thinking about comes afterward.
Sara Blakely wanted an undergarment that worked with the clothes she had chosen. She made an alteration. Then she stayed with the problem long enough to turn the alteration into something another person could buy and use.
I admire that attention to an everyday experience. Getting dressed is personal, practical and full of small negotiations. A seam, a waistband or a garment that moves when you do can change how the whole outfit feels.
Blakely treated those details as worthy of invention.
01
After the scissors.
Spanx’s own account places the first experiment in 1998. Getting ready for a party, Blakely cut the feet off her control-top pantyhose to wear them under white pants. The company launched two years later, after repeated prototypes.
That interval gives the familiar origin story some useful texture. The scissors made a possibility visible. The work that followed had to make it dependable.
I like the scale of the original ambition: make this particular outfit work better for the person wearing it. There is an intimacy to that kind of design. The result has to make sense while someone is getting ready, sitting down, walking around and thinking about the rest of her day.
A good clothing idea lives in those moments. The wearer should be able to get on with them.
02
A product has people inside it.
The National Inventors Hall of Fame’s account identifies the first version’s problem: the cut pantyhose rolled up. It describes the eventual design’s elastic leg bands and waistband, as well as the help behind the invention.
Blakely’s mother supplied a sketch for the patent application. A patent lawyer helped complete the process. A manufacturer reconsidered the idea after discussing it with his three daughters. A Neiman Marcus sales associate recognized a workaround other customers were already making.
I appreciate how many ways of knowing meet here. The wearer knows the irritation. The associate recognizes it across customers. The manufacturer knows how to make a garment. Drawing and technical description help make the idea legible to others.
Blakely’s accomplishment becomes more interesting when those contributions remain in view. She carried a specific need far enough for other people’s expertise to help answer it.
03
The small beginning deserves attention.
In November 2021, Spanx and Blackstone announced the completion of a majority investment at a $1.2 billion company valuation. Blakely had built the business without outside investment for its first 21 years.
That is a remarkable distance from an improvised undergarment. What holds my attention is the continuity between the small beginning and the large company: an experience that could have been dismissed as a minor inconvenience proved worth sustained work.
The scale makes the beginning easier to respect in hindsight. I am interested in the respect it deserved before anyone knew the outcome, when a person was simply trying to explain why the available choices did not do what she needed.
04
A celebration with room for everyone.
In a 2022 conversation published by Blackstone, Blakely described wanting to give employees a memorable way to celebrate the investment. Her gift was two first-class airline tickets to a destination of their choice and $10,000 for each employee.
I like the thoughtfulness of including money alongside the tickets. A trip involves more than getting there. The gesture gave people room to decide what the celebration would look like in their own lives.
In the same conversation, she credited the team for the company’s achievement. The gift gave that appreciation a tangible form.
A founder’s story can become so familiar that everyone else recedes into the background. This moment invites the reader to imagine many people, with different jobs and different hopes for a holiday, sharing in what the business had made possible.
05
Give another owner room to act.
During the pandemic, the Spanx by Sara Blakely Foundation partnered with GlobalGiving to establish the Red Backpack Fund. In its September 2020 announcement, GlobalGiving reported that 1,000 women business owners had been selected for grants of $5,000 each, following the foundation’s $5 million contribution.
The grantmaking partner matters. GlobalGiving described a selection team that included grant specialists, social workers, entrepreneurs, analysts and evaluation experts.
That makes the generosity easier to understand as work. Money had to reach businesses facing urgent needs, and someone had to read applications, assess circumstances and administer the support.
I admire the decision to help other owners retain room to act during a frightening period. A grant cannot promise an outcome. It can give the person closest to a business more resources with which to respond.
What stays with me
What I find generous in Blakely’s story is the attention it gives to people’s practical concerns. How does this garment feel? Who can help make it better? How can the team enjoy what it helped build? What could give another owner some breathing room?
These questions keep the story close to life. They make the product and the company understandable through the people they touch.
My admiration begins there: with a founder who took an ordinary frustration seriously, made something specific in response, and found ways for the success that followed to become useful to others.
Notes & further reading
Sources are linked where discussed: Spanx’s founding account, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Blackstone’s 2021 transaction announcement and 2022 conversation with Blakely, and GlobalGiving’s September 2020 Red Backpack Fund report. Historical figures describe those dates. Interpretation by Rob Urban. Checked September 2026.