Vintage Lingerie Design (is Complicated)

Our Liz lingerie is made in Nottingham in the UK and in the UK the margins are a lot slimmer than in other parts of the world and there's not a lot of investment, and not very much cash to spare. Most of our lingerie is actually made in the factory in India, which we've been working with for 20 years now. There, because wages are lower, there is a lot more investment in manufacturing, so we can ask them to do more experimental things which include dyeing our fabrics and trims to match.

If you look at our Glamour shapewear, our Harlow lingerie and our Retro lingerie it’s all made in our vintage peach and the elastics and trims all dyed in India to match the vintage peach. Because we work with the same shade of peach year in year out we can custom dye our elastics as we know eventually we will use it. Even in India when we have tried to custom dye elastics to match it doesn’t necessarily work out: this Spring we were supposed to be doing a stretch Satine range in a dark peach. We managed to get the stretch fabric which we bought in and we just get the elastic style to match. I thought it'd be quite simple. But when the elastics came back, they didn't match at all because of the difference in texture of the fabrics.

This leads us back to where we are with Liz in the UK. When last year we made our Icon lingerie in the same factory as our Liz lingerie we found a peach matte fabric, which was lovely, but in the end, we had to team it with black simply because we couldn’t get elastics and trims to match. The amount of elastics we would need dyed isn't enough to do the dye bath, and even if we did the dye bath, it wouldn't necessarily match the fabric anyway so it all gets very, very complicated. Then we have the mesh used at the top of the cups, hook and eye tape, slides and rings, even gusset fabric… So that's basically the short answer of why we can't make Liz in peach.

Moving on, we decided to do Liz in white which will give you the option of wearing it under light coloured clothing. Liz is one of our best selling ranges and white is a classic and it will be simple to make because the factory already make it, right?

Well, so you would think. They've made the samples for us and we shot them on Elle Model and the bra didn't fit that great at all and we couldn't understand why. And when we were doing the shoots, I was thinking, "Oh my goodness, something's gone wrong. And I haven't noticed it." And then we put the black one on and the black one fitted perfectly. I couldn't work out why the black one was looking great and the white one wasn't looking so great. One of the reasons was because the white samples were made during lockdown and they were made at home so the seamstresses didn't have access to everything they needed to make it perfectly but the other reason is that the elastic band under the bra, the elastic was stretching more than with our with our black Liz Bra.

You're not going to believe me, but this is definitely true, and it is a big issue, is that when you dye black, it uses a lot of dye and there's lots of fixative in it, so a black elastic won't stretch as much as a white elastic and the same with a power mesh. If you've got a pair of our black power mesh knickers, they won't stretch as much as a pair of our peach power mesh knickers simply because of the black dye. And last time when I was in India, we actually did all these scientific tests and we're weighing all the fabrics to work out how much stretch this fabric has compared with that fabric, even though it was made to exactly the same spec.

We managed to source the right white elastic for our bra from Stretchline, which is the main elastic supplier to the trade in the UK now. The only problem was that they only had just under 500 meters left so we took it all and we had it shipped to our factory in Nottingham, in mid July.

A couple of weeks ago, I chased up our order and the factory said to me, "We're still waiting for the elastic." And I'm like, "Well, as far as we're concerned, it was shipped and you should've got it." It turns out that during the COVID mayhem, it had got completely lost. Stretchline were great and even though their minimums are 2000 meters, they made us another 500 and shipped that off to the factory and they now have it and are making the bras. There's always little things that are little irritants like the white elastic is more expensive than the black elastic as it’s a different spec. Then the factory said to me, they said, "We presume that you want the non yellowing foam?” because the bottom of the cups is lined in three-millimeter foam. Of course with the black bra, we don't have to worry about any foam yellowing because it's black, but with the whites after time, if you use a cheaper foam then it does yellow after time.

We want our lingerie to last and look pristine for as long as possible and have the best fit so if we were really bound on price, then we would have used the cheaper elastic and the cheaper foam, but having seen the bra at the shoot and it, not looking as good as the black one, there really was a visible difference. We really want to make our pieces as good as possible for you because I'm sure you'll notice a difference as well.