Lingerie Startup Uses Big Data to Engineer the World’s Best Bra
June 11, 2014 by admin
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Michelle Lam. Photo: Courtesy of TrueCo When Victoria’s Secret wants to promote new products, it sends the “angels”–that stunning band of supermodels–strutting down a catwalk wearing glittery wings, stiletto heels, and not much else. And Calvin Klein takes much the same tack, putting up giant black and white billboards graced by oil-slick models lounging moodily in all manner of suggestive poses, abs a-blazing. In the lingerie industry, the old marketing trope is true: sex sells. But Michelle Lam hopes that data can sell too. Lam is the founder and CEO of TrueCo, a San Francisco-based e-commerce startup that helps women find the right bra for their bodies using data science. Each TrueCo customer takes a two-minute quiz about her body before buying a bra. Then, much like Netflix does with TV and movies, TrueCo shows each shopper bras from a variety of brands that are a good fit for her based on the quiz. Since the company launched in 2012, TrueCo has collected some 7 million data points on their customers, from details about different breast shapes to what percentage of women experience strap slippage. Now, having successfully sold products from other designers, the company is officially launching its own line of lingerie that’s been specially infused with data. It’s a move that could have implications far beyond the world of bras and panties. Data is the thing that allows many of the world’s biggest companies to do what they do. It powers Google search, Facebook ads, and Amazon recommendations. But while we’re accustomed to online services collecting information on us and using it to tailor their websites to our tastes, when it comes to physical goods, we take what we can get. Sure, retailers can do market research to predict trends, but at the end of a season, they’re invariably left with a clearance rack full of once promising products that turned out to be duds. TrueCo is part of a growing group of startups that’s using data to make physical products a better fit for their customers. “With all this virtual stuff, it’s so easy to create a uniquely personal experience for every person,” says Lam, “but creating physical goods that also feel like they’re made for you is what’s incredibly fascinating to me.” The problem Lam is trying to solve is the fact that most women are wearing the wrong bras. The straps slip, the bands pinch, and the cups, well, runneth over. That’s not, Lam says, because all bras are ill-fitting. It’s because all women are different. TrueCo’s software has found some 6,000 different body types and counting in its customer pool. Finding the right bra could involve hours in a dressing room, if not trips to different stores, so most women settle not on a bra that fits well, but one that fits well enough. Lam, who was an investor at Bain Capital Ventures before launching TrueCo, knew this process could be improved with technology. Some of TrueCo’s new line. Image: Courtesy of TrueCo TrueCo’s new line of lingerie, which includes bras, panties, and loungewear, is based on an entirely new fitting system for bras called TrueSpectrum. Unlike traditional bra sizes, which only account for the size of a woman’s rib cage and the distance between her breasts, TrueSpectrum sizes take into account whether her breasts are full or shallow, high or low, wide-set, or a combination of a few. The bras, themselves, have then been designed to address the most common complaints reported in the quiz. For instance, 62 percent of women complain about “busting out,” particularly in their underarms. So, TrueCo designed a bra with a high-cut spandex band to prevent that from happening. The company launched a pilot test of four different bras last fall, which soon became one of the company’s best selling products. Those bras now account for more than a quarter of TrueCo’s sales and have helped grow revenue 600 percent in just a few months. Lam is hoping to replicate those results with this new line. “We don’t create anything that’s not going to sell because it’s not going to fit anyone,” says Lam. “We create less waste.” Novel as TrueCo’s approach may be, the company does have competition. One startup, ThirdLove, allows women to take their measurements at home with a body scanning technology app. And recently, even Victoria’s Secret began offering customers a quiz on its website. That other brands are catching on comes as no surprise to Lam. “I look at the old retailers out there, and I see an imperfect model,” she says. “I think this is the way women are going to shop for intimate apparel in the future, and not only that, but I really believe this is the way women will shop for all apparel in the future.”
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Corsets to Wonderbras: Fashion museum takes on lingerie
June 11, 2014 by admin
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NEW YORK – From a 1770 corset to a 2014 bra-and-panty set in lacy stretch silk, the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology has put the focus on lingerie and ladies foundation garments in a new exhibition.
In about 70 pieces, “Exposed: A History of Lingerie” touches on the mechanics, marketing and cultural touchstones — hello Wonderbra! — that not only shape and adorn but also helped define culture around the globe.
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The exhibition, which spans the 1760s to present day, opened June 3 and runs through Nov. 15. A companion book will be released by Yale University Press this summer.
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THE CORSET’S RISE AND FALL
The corset’s profile was first upped in the late Renaissance and remained popular in many forms through the early 20th century.
“It was a pretty essential element of fashionable dress for about 400 years,” said assistant curator Colleen Hill, who organized the exhibit.
The corset, which originated within aristocratic court culture and gradually spread throughout society, was all about a slender waist, she said. By the mid-18th century, the desired silhouette was an inverted cone, lifting the breasts with the help of stays crafted out of silk, whalebone or wood.
Decorative centre busks were carved, painted and adorned with text or years. They were key in thrusting a woman’s posture upright to make the most of the shape the corset was intended to achieve, Hill said.
By the early 19th century, the corset still included a centre busk but lacked all-around stays for a more softly structured fit that still encased the body and kept a woman’s posture erect.
“It was important for women to have this correct posture,” Hill said. “It was essential for fitting into your clothes, for decorum and for modesty.”
At the dawn of the 20th century, some corset makers continued to promote their wares as “healthy style,” but the designs remained “extremely restricting,” she said. Certain designs made a woman appear rigidly straight in front while resulting in a severely arched back.
By 1920, the corset had essentially become a girdle.
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THE PEIGNOIR AND LOUNGEWEAR
One late 19th-century article discovered by Hill said American women wore loungewear with a corset underneath while doing morning household chores or preparing for their day.
The corset under a peignoir “is something French women did not do,” she said. “I thought that was very interesting because some of these garments were meant to essentially be a reprieve from these really constricting foundation garments like the corset.”
By the early 20th century, Hill said, loungewear served more functions. The tea gown developed from the peignoir or dressing gown and was worn during 5 o’clock tea.
“It was something that a woman could wear within her home but you would greet your guests at home for tea in this garment, so you still wanted something really fashionable, as luxurious as you could afford, but it was something that could be worn without a corset. We don’t see tea gowns today.”
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SEDUCTION AND EROTICISM
The British company Agent Provocateur, founded in 1994 by Joseph Corre, the son of Vivienne Westwood, and his now ex-wife, Serena Rees, represents a turning point in lingerie’s modern history, Hill said. They opened their first boutique in 1996.
“They were selling lingerie that was highly eroticized, things that were high end and beautifully made, so they’re classy yet they’re taking a cue from things like the old Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogues that are just really overtly erotic,” she said.
The evocative nature combined with high-end craftsmanship offered by Agent Provocateur led to a greater acceptance of eroticized undergarments and lingerie, Hill said. The company now operates boutiques around the world.
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THE WONDERBRA
Pre-Wonderbra, women looking for some help in the bust department relied on “gay deceivers,” an early 20th-century euphemism for falsies that could be placed inside bras, Hill said.
“Even some corsets from the 19th century have these kind of falsies built into them, so the idea of augmenting your natural breast size in some way is very old and probably impossible to trace all the way back,” she said.
Enter the Wonderbra, with its plunge, padding and pushup via underwire. According to some reports, the name was first trademarked in the U.S. in 1955 but came out of Canada in 1939 as developed by Moses Nadler, founder of a corset company. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that the Wonderbra really took off, Hill said.
Sales were driven by a 1994 ad campaign that featured smiling model Eva Herzigova looking down at her breasts in a Wonderbra with the tagline: “Hello Boys.” The popularity of the ad, including billboards, sent sales skyrocketing. At one point demand exceeded supplies, Hill said.
“There’s an urban legend that when people saw these billboards on the street they would literally cause traffic accidents,” she said.
© The Associated Press, 2014