About this project
Lara Intimates: Sustainable Underwear Made in London
£22,850
203
Hey! We’re Faith and Cindy, co-creators of Lara Intimates. As London College of Fashion graduates, we know how to make really good bras but didn’t like what was on the market. And eco-friendly bras? Hard to find, not stylish and super expensive.
That’s why we started Lara Intimates, a sustainable underwear brand launching September 2017. Every Lara garment is made in our London studio with reclaimed fabrics.
The Lara collection has every piece a woman needs in her underwear drawer including soft bras, wired bras, briefs and bodysuits. Bras come in 28A-36E.
All Lara pieces are available on Kickstarter up to 30% off retail price and you’ll receive them before we launch in September. When our Kickstarter gets funded, you'll receive a survey to select the product, colour and size you want. Not sure about your bra size? It's cool. The Find My Size tool (and our fit experts) will be there to help.
Shipping is free worldwide.
Every year, millions of tonnes of fabrics are wasted at Chinese mills when unused or dyed the wrong colour. We work with a UK supplier that sources luxury surplus fabrics from around the world. We call it reclaimed fabric. Using materials that would have otherwise gone to landfill is the most sustainable option (for Lara!) because we don’t create anything new, while saving textile waste.
We designed our supply chain as close to home as possible. Nearly all suppliers are in the UK to support local industry and reduce our transportation footprint. On every Lara product page, you can tap Trace Me to see exactly where your garments came from.
Packaging should be for keeps, not disposable. Lara bras and briefs come in cloth envelopes for holding underwear/makeup/tampons/whatever. Swing tags, labels and stickers are made in England with eco-friendly practices.
Conventional apparel brands leave 10% of all fabric wasted on the cutting room floor. At Lara, we generate zero fabric waste, converting scraps from the cutting room floor into stuffing for a new garment. That product will be released in a few months - stay tuned!
Sustainability shouldn’t be confined to a certain size, so we extended our size range from 28A-36E.
Layers of mesh support around the body, taking the stress off your shoulders. This innovative design approach is way cooler (and comfier) than chunky elastics. Lara bras truly look (and feel) great on all sizes A-E.
When it comes to soft bras, small, medium, large just doesn’t cut it. Lara soft bras come in half sizes, so they fit and support your body perfectly.
85% of women wear the wrong bra size - don’t be one of them! Online size guides are confusing and in-store measuring services can be super awkward. We are determined to simplify the process so more women can feel empowered finding their bra size.
Bra fitting and grading (making bras into different sizes) is a technical process using certain mathematical formulas. It’s based on your underbust and bust measurement. All you need to do is measure those two spots on your body and enter them into our Find My Size tool (on LaraIntimates.com), and the tool will work out your Lara bra size.
Lots of bra companies do weird things like ‘add 4 inches’ for your band size. Its hella confusing. At Lara, if you measure 30, you wear a 30. Simple.
If you have any fit questions or hesitations, get in touch. We’re happy to help.
Wholesale is so yesterday. Lara will sell direct to consumer, eliminating wholesale markups and keeping our products at an accessible price point. If Lara was sold at boutiques or department stores, women wouldn’t have access to the Find My Size tool or information about Lara’s sustainable practices. To reform the way that women buy lingerie and provide a better product, our team needs to be in control of the design, shopping and delivery processes.
So where can you find Lara bras? LaraIntimates.com, obviously. We also plan to stock on multi-brand, direct to consumer online stores. These platforms don’t hold stock so they charge a very small margin while connecting millions of shoppers a month with Lara Intimates. Within 3 years of launching, we plan to open our first pop-up shop in London. Soon after, we’ll pop-up in other cities worldwide and put down roots in the most successful locations.
Co-creators Faith Leeves and Cindy Liberman met four years ago, studying lingerie and swimwear design at London College of Fashion. The two quickly bonded over an aspiration to live a sustainable lifestyle and a love of shopping with responsible brands.
Faith has worked in a variety of fashion roles from freelance design, pattern cutting and visual merchandising. Most recently she headed up product development at an Australian swimwear company where she worked closely with a factory and production team to design and execute products to a very high standard. Lara’s exceptional fit and aesthetic are a testament to Faith’s ability to make beautiful, functional and wearable pieces.
Cindy worked throughout university for start-up fashion and technology companies where she learned the inner workings of the fashion supply chain, business development and digital marketing. Lara’s rapid online growth and consistent brand story is evidence of Cindy’s ability to connect with an online audience.
As Faith and Cindy gained experience in the lingerie industry, they learned about the not-so-nice parts of the supply chain. Companies they worked for outsourced design and production to other countries, where transparency was near impossible to achieve. The two believed they could create something with better values that women truly wanted to wear.
At it’s core, Lara Intimates is about ethical practices, British manufacturing and outstanding product quality. With that in mind, the possibilities for the future are limitless.
The Lara Factory will grow into the new era model of what a lingerie factory should be. Incorporating the latest technology, our production will be efficient and competitive. Best of all, we can train the next generation of lingerie designers and makers with valuable skills and keep jobs here in the UK.
In the coming years, we plan to grow Lara into a global e-commerce brand. Within three years we will open the first Lara pop-up shop in London. If this model works well, we will recreate it in other cities around the world and set up retail stores in the most successful locations.
Risks and challenges
What happens if we don’t get all the funding we need from Kickstarter? If necessary, we can scale back the number of products and/or colours we launch with. That will reduce the amount of fabrics and materials we need to buy. Making less product also allows us to hire a smaller production team or hire the same number of people on a part-time basis until we launch in September. A bit of personal savings and money from grants adds some financial cushion.
We expect to deliver Kickstarter orders by August 31st. Estimated production times are based on the speed of our design team and producing certain volumes. A new production team, joining us in June, will most likely be slower than our production time estimates at first. Increased number of sizes and colours also slows down production somewhat because our team cuts different sizes separately and stops sewing to change machine thread colours. Even with slight production delays, we believe August 31st is still a realistic delivery date but will be in contact with our backers if there are any delays. Maybe that’s way too much detail, but we always prefer to be upfront and honest about all our processes - especially with our valued Kickstarter backers.
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Funding period
- (35 days)