This New Lingerie Brand Is All About Female Empowerment

We don’t think we’re reaching too far to say that, for most women, lingerie (and underwear in general) is a rather intimate subject, and is of the utmost importance when it comes to how our clothes end up fitting our bodies. We definitely take our underwear pretty seriously, but it’s also largely true that we’ve never particularly thought of it as a method for social change. Enter lingerie brand Empowered by You.

Founder Renata Black spent years working in MicroFinance, the general term for a global system of funding small business entrepreneurs, usually in third-world countries, who don’t have access to banking and other standard forms of financial backing. Renata’s focus was providing these services for women specifically.

“We helped women start their own business as an exit strategy out of poverty,” Renata, who helped more than 2,500 women escape poverty, tells StyleCaster. “Women have proven statistically to be the best investment. The first thing they do is they help their kids go to school and send them to doctors; it breaks the cycle of poverty for children.”