ondear Will the fitting room die? As more and more Singapore fashion startups (most notably Stitch Fix) quietly assert, maybe it should be. Inconvenient and unpleasant lighting can make any shopping trip full of energy, but no fitting room feels as painful as trying on underwear. Burgundy Fox – a one year old Stitch Fix for intimates – hopes to make sure you don’t have that uncomfortable experience anymore.
As we all know, the underwear industry lacks diversity – whether it is representative or the actual style itself – in reality, the founder of Burgundy Fox, Leslie Wong, is frustrated.
“The catalyst of Burgundy Fox is my own experience in entering the underwear boutique, I chose to go there because I never liked to enter Victoria’s secret. I remember there always felt embarrassed – overwhelmed,” Huang said. She hopes that boutique shopping will be more comfortable, but found this experience very aggressive. She said: “The salesperson asked me about my love life and wanted to see everything right.” Most importantly, Wong didn’t even like anything – she started looking for something that made her feel comfortable and confident, and found that it was just right. in contrast.
Obviously, Wong is not the first person to feel this feeling when buying a bra. “I started thinking more about why the whole experience was so daunting for women. I started asking my friends about their experiences and always embarrassed them,” Wong said. “Not only that, they started talking about the feeling that their bodies are not suitable for certain underwear.”
This is the case for Wong. “There must be a way to change this. During my growth, I struggled with my physical self-confidence and realized that I didn’t want my niece to suffer the same fate,” she said. “I’m frustrated with outdated marketing because these marketings lack the representation of the female body, which in turn creates more insecurity.”
So Wong did something and created Burgundy Fox, a sophisticated women-owned and operated subscription underwear box that focuses on size inclusiveness and feminist empowerment. “We are different from any other underwear company because we match women of all sizes [XS to 3X] with underwear styles and sizes from brands around the world. Then she tried these items in a comfortable home,” Wong Explain. Since the launch of Burgundy Fox in early 2017, the company has sold more than 1,000 subscription boxes and donated hundreds of pairs of underwear to I Support The Girls.
I asked Ms. Huang about the stigma of the body in the underwear, the female gaze and how the Burgundy Fox approached the representative.
Macaela MacKenzie: First, let’s talk about style. Part of the frustration is that Victoria’s secretly promoted images and ideals seem to be the only choice for women. How does the Burgundy fox plan a more diverse style?
Leslie Wong: In essence, we rely on empathy and data to be right. We use the online experience to gather information about this person and understand their style and content. If they don’t know exactly what they are looking for, we have a stylist who offers them items of all sizes.
After learning more about the underwear industry, I learned that it is difficult to find bras that are larger than D or over 36. These bras are both cute and stylish – from the customer’s words, it’s hard to find those that are not “grandma style.” So this is exactly what I did when I started the company – I want all women to feel good about their bodies and find cute and suitable clothing for them.
MacKenzie: When browsing your website, the first thing that pops up is the diversity of models. While more and more brands are considering size inclusive (which is great), the images we see are usually limited to zero-size models and positive-size models – it leaves all women in between. dialogue. Burgundy Fox seems to solve this problem very well. What is the process of ensuring that you represent a broader group of women?
Wong: The company really started from this demand to better solve the problem of lack of representation. In addition to the diversity of sizes, there is also a diversity of body types – we consciously look for models of various appearances and heights as well as women of different sizes.
In the early days of the size and inclusive movement, there was a conversation about “real women.” Just like, everyone is a real woman – only some body types are not enough. We asked the marketing department, “Can’t we see enough?”
In addition, meeting the model is very important. Knowing that they have our mission, they really believe that it creates a better environment, so this is also very huge.
