Hey lovely,
It's time for a quick catch-up about the bra. Yes, that one.
If you watch our socials, you've likely noticed the endless parade of fit models passing through the DTL office across the past couple of years, helping us test and sample our new underwire sports bra. By my count we've reached fit model number nine.
Without any hesitation, I can tell you this is the toughest product I've ever worked on. Period.
We've now gone beyond two years of development, which feels wild to type out. This isn't an existing bra that we tweak a little before stitching in a DTL tag. The design is brand new, and I'm trying to build something that I truly haven't found on the market anywhere.
That's thrilling, but it also makes the whole process VERY hard. It was one of the main reasons I flew to China in July.
I knew exactly what I wanted from this bra. I could picture it clearly. I had the construction in mind, along with how it should fit and hold. Yet explaining something that doesn't exist yet, from Australia, using sketches, tech packs, photos, videos and texts, is TOUGH.
I simply had to be in the room.
It turned out to be among the most amazing product development experiences of my life.
We arrived at the factory around 8 am and stayed until roughly 6:30 pm. That's over 10 hours of pure chaos 😂
At times about six of us were squeezed inside the sampling space: myself, the garment tech, Carl (who watches over DTL at our manufacturer), the sourcing team handling fabrics, trims and components, and the sample machinists.
The whole room talks in Chinese, and my vocabulary is a single word: xiexie 😂
Carl translates, I lean on Google Translate on my phone, and I act out what I'm after. Then out came the scissors. We literally sliced bras apart, mixed and matched pieces, pinned bits together, cut new openings, altered straps and adjustability, tried out different ways of constructing it, and basically Frankensteined bras until the idea in my head slowly became something real that we could look at and test.
Next we'd dash to the overlocker, stitch something up, try it on, and decide no. Cut it open again. Back to the sewing machine. Pin another spot.
Try it once more. Our garment tech would step in, then the sourcing team would return with a different option, and we'd adjust something else again. Honestly, it was manic 😂
Being able to change something, see the result right there, explain why it wasn't working and test another fix straight away is something we could never match through messages sent from Australia. And that day brought some HUGE breakthroughs.
Walking out of China, I felt we'd finally solved the trickiest parts of the design.
Now we're locking in several key components, the underwire among them.
At first we planned on a flexible wire, but when you design all the way up to a J cup, "good enough" just doesn't cut it. It has to genuinely hold you up.
So we've gone down the route of creating custom underwires. The sizes we need aren't available off the shelf, so they must be made to order, and the minimums are about 5,000 pairs of underwires FOR EACH SIZE.
That's before the bra itself exists.
The bra will be offered in roughly 36 different sizes. The biggest lesson I've picked up during this whole journey is that a bra can't just be scaled up and expected to work across totally different bodies and cup sizes. That's the reason so many different women have visited our office.
Different bodies, bust shapes, cup sizes and proportions. Fit, adjust, resample, fit again. Round and round.
What I've put into this bra, whether money, mental energy, development time, samples, fit models, custom components or other resources, is by far the largest investment I've ever made in one DTL product. I've definitely had moments of asking myself, WHY on earth did I choose this? Then I remember the reason.
If we nail it, I honestly believe it'll change the game. And I refuse to release something simply because two years have already gone into it.
I'll launch when I can say with total confidence: this is the very bra I wanted to make.
Many of you have been asking when it will arrive, so I wanted to share a real update instead of a vague "it's coming." Believe me, I'm working on it. We're getting nearer. For the very first time in this long, long, long process, the finish line is in sight. I've also reached the point where I'm slightly scared that some enormous brand with an enormous budget will spot it after launch and copy it.
Perhaps I should stop sharing so much with you. For now, that's where things stand.
More than two years. Nine fit models. Too many samples to count. One slightly unhinged day of development in China lasting ten hours. Plus a LOT of money spent on custom components.
All of it for a single bra.
My sincere hope is that once you wear it, you'll see why we wouldn't hurry it.
More news soon, as we edge closer.
Rhi xx
Founder, DTL