If you follow fashion news, you may have caught a recent story where Hopeless Lingerie accused ASOS of design theft. According to Hopeless, ASOS copied two of their designs, the Darla Knickers and Rosemary Bralette. In a previous post on the modern day reappearance of vintage lingerie trends, I shared how Hopeless’ Darla Knickers reminded me of similar cutaway burlesque styles from the 1950s. Yet this entire fashion copyright discussion, […]
I hold the firm but controversial belief that no design is truly original. At least not in the world of lingerie: designers don’t live in a vacuum and they all face influences, whether it’s consciously or not. Inspiration can come from almost any source, be it the haute couture catwalks or historical costume. More often than you’d expect, it’s purely a matter of zeitgeist that sees a swathe of labels […]
Every career is subject to stereotypes, both good and bad. Working as a lingerie designer, retailer and writer, I’ve heard my fair share of silly clichés. From the start, my career path has brought with it a bunch of myths that I’m constantly defending with the hope of changing people’s ideas of what being a lingerie designer really means. While lingerie is not as risqué a topic as it once […]
Though I can’t sew for anything, one of my hobbies when I really need to decompress and unwind is embroidery. I’m not even slightly good at it yet (my brain has this annoying habit of forgetting everything I’ve learned if I go more than a day or two without practice on a more complicated stitch), but it feels very meditative to me. My mind slips into this weird state between […]
As an intimates designer, I feel like I’ve heard every opinion about how much money we make. There are the parents of design students who wish their children would go into law instead of lingerie so they can actually support themselves. There are the people on Tumblr who talk about how indie designers must be rolling in the cash they make from their allegedly overpriced wares. There are the companies […]
