Underwear Designer

Aimee Brown

FED up with being unable to find underwear that was comfortable and undetectable under her V-neck tops, cocktail dresses and strappy singlets, Lucy Hosken decided to design her own.

Coming from a marketing background, Hosken had no experience in fashion design, but didn’t let that deter her.

Enlisting the help of family and friends, she started to research the market. “I spent long nights on the internet looking for products similar to what I wanted and researching the best fabrics to use,” she says. “I asked my friends what they wanted, and a lot of it matched my own experience.

“You see different styles that look amazing on models, but when you try them on they won’t sit right. I wanted something to wear under these clothes that was invisible but supportive.”

Hosken drew her first sketches with the help of a fashion designer friend, then set about transforming them into the real product. She found a factory in China willing to produce the underwear. Her marketing background, combined with a commerce degree, made the number-crunching side of the business easier to navigate.

Six months later, she received the first samples of her Nearly Nude range, but they were not quite what she had expected. “It was hilarious,” she says. “They were huge. The language barrier presented a bit of a challenge.

“It took three months of to-ing and fro-ing until we got it right. I’d get these crazy packages in the mail and have to keep sending them back.” But her persistence paid off because within six months of launching the range in April 2005, it was stocked in more than 30 stores in Sydney, including Charlie Brown and Bare by Rebecca Davies.

This has since grown to more than 100 Australia-wide and 40 international stores. Hosken says her biggest coup to date is having Nearly Nude stocked in the British department store Harvey Nichols. “That happened last month,” she says.

“That was a great sense of achievement for me. They approached me. It’s quite different from the way it happens here, where department stores are dominated by major multi-national brands.
“I also got a call from the fashion director of UK Vanity Fair saying she wanted a slip in each colour for herself. That was really rewarding on a personal level as well.”

Hosken already has plans to extend the range to include a strapless slip, and aims to become a serious contender in the international lingerie market.

 
By Aimee Brown, The Herald Sun,  September 30, 2006.