Our founder, Anna-Louise speaks from the heart in this recent interview about why our Comfy Curves Cotton Bra range means so much.

As most of you know It’s been a very long road to get here and for those that don’t, I'll try the condensed version, but be warned, it might be a long story!

In 2013 not long after I decided to change careers from photography to fashion, I found out my mother was diagnosed with Metastatic Breast Cancer. She lost her fight early 2014.

Now on her anniversary a decade later, her birthday month and breast cancer awareness month, I’ve worked towards a really big goal. Making a difference is more than making a product or service for me, it’s helping people have a more comfortable life. So let me explain.

I can remember it, like it was yesterday. As I sat with my mother in the hospice, I watched many people come and go who were really uncomfortable, it was one thing they said money couldn’t buy. One lady told me, “I don’t wish my life to be any longer, just a little easier”.  It really stuck with me. 

The heightened sense of smell, touch and taste was evident with everyone. When I brought in a salad for my mum she could tell that it had originally come in a plastic bag, even though I had washed it and put it on a plate. I couldn’t believe it, I had become so disconnected with the source of things that I couldn’t tell. I had also got so accustomed to everything coming in plastic that I didn’t even occur to me. 

The skin irritations from synthetics, rashes and sores and the constant need to change clothes was an uncomfortable reality everyday. I remember one lady had waited all day to see her daughter, who when she finally arrived after shopping at Target for hospice clothes for her, didn’t comprehend that she just couldn't wear any of it and that none of it really mattered, she just wanted time together.  Just being able to wear a normal top instead of a hospital gown for when people were visiting was a task. I saw first hand how our clothes can affect us, and I don’t mean style, I mean real comfort.

The time at the hospice obviously affected me, how could it not? As I returned to my life and my business at the time, it was hard to be motivated in making the designed-to-fit garments I was making at the time, when the world around me seemed to be shifting to a more comfortable life and lifestyle.

A conversation with a lady at the markets one day really crystalised a way forward, one that was environmentally conscious and purpose driven. It was the start of the popularisation of the Farm To Table movement and I had slowly started to eat less meat, more organics and grow what I could, learning where food was being sourced from.  

At the time my perspective was, if we could do it with food, why couldn’t we do it with clothing? 

The naysayers were far and wide, saying it couldn’t be done, you’d be crazy to try. “100% Australian made was not viable and full traceability was impossible” One industry professional even told me to stop making waves and just do what everyone else does. 

The challenge was laid. 

I moved back to Sydney, enrolled in Ultimo TAFE and went back to school, in my 40s! 

I researched the traceability of global supply chains, stumbled on to fabric fraud and found the solution I was looking for, a traceable natural fibre, not chemically interfered with, from paddock to fabric with no synthetics. Pure Australian grown single origin cotton and I was thrilled to bits to find it.

What to start with? A designed to fit top? A dress? No, that one top everyone has that would be fine for hospital visitors. The t-shirt. The most comfortable widely owned single garment. It’s also the single highest polluting garment on the planet because most are not recycled. Most are made from low quality blended fabrics using a mix of natural fibres and synthetics. My vision was clear, it had to be pure natural fibres, non toxic, biodegradable and Australian made, representing everything I wanted to produce.  

I launched Farm To Hanger at the Made In Marrickville festival 22 October 2017 with the Humble Tee, 100% Australian Made and 100% traceable. Normally founders end their story here with “and the rest is history” but not us. It was just the beginning of the next road. 

It wasn’t enough to have a sustainable product, I wanted the whole business to reflect my values and getting premises that did that as well was the next step. 

But the universe stepped in. 

3 older ladies approached me at a market stall a few weeks later. (Yes, it’s a recurring theme!) They asked if I could make them knickers from the t-shirt offcuts. I recognised these ladies, not their faces, but their age, their fragility, their needs. They had been buying knickers that were getting increasingly more uncomfortable, lower quality and blended with synthetics. They needed a different product to suit their needs and they loved my environmental ethos so I said ‘sure, I’ll give it a go’ and proceeded to make and launch our Comfy Bum Knicker Range. 

 It didn’t stop there though. It was really about working from the inside out. I refined and developed the whole range. 

I had got tested for the BRCA gene and found that I didn’t have it, but neither did my mother. The cancer wasn’t a genetic mutation. I wanted to make a bra at the time but my skill level for pattern making and manufacturing was only suitable for what would be a bralette and at my last mammogram, my bust weighed almost 5kg. A bralette wasn’t going to cut it. 

I decided to make the Comfy Cami instead, and my customers loved it. Just enough softness and fit for menopausal days, without gaping underarms or spaghetti straps. 

The full bra was going to take a lot more time and effort if I was going to make it completely from non-chemically processed fibres and without any synthetics, I was going to have to go back to school.

Not long after we moved to Victoria to build the off-grid factory, I signed up for a lingerie course at RMIT Melbourne and loved it. I registered my interest for the advanced course and then Covid hit. 

It was a tough time, staff fluctuations, supply issues and increasing costs. (Did someone say cotton and elastic for masks?, said every sewer across the country). The large-scale off-grid factory that we had just got council approval for, was cancelled. We decided to renovate our smaller farm shed to keep going. Warm, light-filled and facing the forest it has become a beautiful workspace. 

The bra development was slow. No one made natural fibre bra backs and every pattern book had measurements for synthetic fabrics and none had any real support structure using natural fibres, size charts didn’t match and I had to work with what I had. I released a couple of crop tops in the meantime to see how customers found the fabric, fit and support and go from the feedback of those, to then do the basics of underbust support. 

I worked hard and developed our Comfy Curves Cotton Bra - Version 1.0 - from making our own bra backs, getting custom made biodegradable bra elastic and Oeko Tex certified rings and sliders. It took a long time just to get that first version out and we sold out very quickly.  What it did give me was loads of great feedback.  The main requests were for more support, more lift and a wider range of sizes and I found that most of my customers had been breast cancer survivors. It really hit home, this was the universe coming full circle. 

I thought instead of doing version 2.0 based on that pattern, I’ve got to get to work on engineering this to work better. I called in my previous construction experience, it sounded like I needed cantilever and suspension bridges. I was going to have to re-engineer all the materials and refine the design for shape, support and structure.  Who was going to teach me how to do that? With no bra manufacturing left onshore, I had spoken with some of the ex employees but they said no one was doing bra teaching.  

I thought it would probably take me a few months, maybe 6 months to get the 2.0 done. I found a lovely lady overseas who specialises in bra engineering and drafting. I started learning all of her methods and procedures. It wasn’t easy to learn long distance and her materials and methodology were still all based on synthetics, so I would still have to come up with my own formula and engineer everything to match.  

I lost count of the number of prototypes for each moving part, I was trying to document everything as I went because as you move one thing everything else changes. The frustration was setting in and it had now taken me more than a year. I was losing faith that I would be able to do it. I had friends, family and staff saying "keep going", “you’re so close” ,“don’t give up now” and I persevered. 

All the moving parts were coming together and the testing was going well,  it was definitely looking much better than anything else I’d produced. 

My mother’s birthday, breast cancer awareness month and the business’ birthday was my hard deadline and that was 2 months away. I re-engineered the elastic and it was on its way along with an assortment of different hardware, then everything stopped. The factory had decided to close for the northern summer holidays without notice. It caught me totally off-guard but I was determined, I had come too far to pack it in. So I emailed and called the CEO and we agreed my order would be the first to leave once they got back but I still had customs and shipping delays to deal with. It was going to be really close.  

I received an email a few weeks later and cried. It was the Good Design Awards. It was really unexpected. I had submitted all of our information on our Comfy Curves Cotton Bra including the version I was working on and the future version to include biodegradable lace that I’ve already sourced. They had said I had won and that it was embargoed information, so I had to wait to share the news. What they hadn’t known was that I had been applying to do fashion weeks for years and was turned down every time. I was told I wasn’t designer enough to be included. It was hard and here I was getting a Good Design Award for probably one of the most complicated garment designs and with all biodegradable materials and 100% Australian made. It was a very proud moment and it still is. It’s difficult to describe that validation, I really didn’t think I was going to win so it was really lovely. 

The elastic arrived, the samples were made, photoshoot done, press release ready and a blackbird slammed into the window next to me. I ran outside and scooped it up. It wasn’t responsive and I’m not great with birds. I held it for a little while and it started to cling to my finger. I put it in the sun to keep warm while it sat out the shock. No one was around, which is rare between work and home life. It was still and I kept an eye on it. It fluffed up and sat in the sun for a while. A blackbird, normally a bad omen, but I was so calm and peaceful and I forgot about the 101 things that I need to do that I had been running around doing and waited and watched until it flew off. I said thanks mum and then I turned around and pushed off the email to launch the Comfy Curves Cotton Bra V2.0.  So that was just recently. It was 2nd October, breast cancer awareness month, 2 days before my mum’s birthday and ahead of schedule for the business’ birthday which is the 22nd, I had done it.  

The black elastic order would be delayed which meant I could only release the natural and white but we did it. It’s a full support, structured cup, pure natural fibre, 100% Australian made bra and my customers just cheered for me. I received emails, messages, DMs, phone calls, you name it, it was so wonderful, still is because they are still sending.  

I didn’t want to stop there and I had made a few enquiries with a number of charities that specialise in Breast Cancer support, services, treatment and research. One thing stuck out for me, I had just done so much research and development, some much time, money and effort, more than anyone will know, to produce what some see as just another product on a website, that I wondered if there had been more research and development into metastatic cancer, would my mum still be here? Who knows, but maybe I can help them do more research so that one day someone else’s mum doesn’t have to die from metastatic breast cancer. 

So I’ve chosen to support the Australian Breast Cancer Research foundation with $5.00 from every Comfy Curves Cotton Bra sale being donated to Breast Cancer Research and while it doesn’t seem much, it all adds up.  It’s one of those things where I find that the cause is bigger than me and I have this opportunity to help and I want to help which is why the Comfy Curves Cotton Bra range means so much to me. Thank you so much.