Two San Francisco Lingerie Designers Speak Volumes

With Tiny Garments

Entrepreneurs and lingerie designers Stephanie Bodnar of Evgenia and Taylour Ganster of Velvet Sunroom both create amazing garments with very small amounts of fabric, bringing customers joy and empowerment while they’re at it.

That’s no small task for garments that are so often tied to body image issues and societal pressure to look a certain way. It all adds up to a unique set of challenges for lingerie designers when it comes to design, marketing, and selling.

Both designers are one-woman shows who work on their brands whenever they can. Ganster is a full time therapist who says sewing for Velvet Sunroom is her own therapy. Bodnar studied womenswear at FIDM and has a 4-year-old daughter to care for. She clocks about 20 hour per week in her design studio.

Time constraints notwithstanding, both have been interested in lingerie from a young age and are passionate about helping people celebrate their bodies with beautiful, high-quality, comfortable lingerie.

Intimate Design

Both Bodnar and Ganster started out creating made-to-order lingerie. While Ganster’s Velvet Sunroom brand is still bespoke, Bodnar now offers sizes XS through XL (and corsets up to XXL), along with a custom offering for customers outside of her regular sizes. Both brands name inclusiveness as a core value and aim to create pieces for everyone.

“It’s important that every single customer who wants lingerie can access my pieces,” Ganster says. “This has been the mission from day one and will remain a core value. The human body is a beautiful thing and I hope someday to live in a society that accepts all abilities, bodies, races, genders, etc.” And she says that to date she has sold far more XL sets than XS.

Following advice from her mentor at FISF, Bodnar rebranded her previous lingerie business, Honey Cooler Handmade, creating Evgenia, named after her Ukrainian grandmother who was an accomplished seamstress. With the rebrand, she created a more refined aesthetic and evolved production from one-of-a-kind pieces to a more reproducible line, offering sizes rather than custom garments. And while she does offer a custom service for customers needing other sizes, she says she still gets criticism for not offering a wider size range in her collections.

“But I’m only one person and I make all my own patterns by hand,” she says. “Each piece of lingerie is sewn by me, from samples to stock… I’m hopeful I can expand more, but as a mom of a young child, my time is more limited than I’d like.

Ganster says designing is her favorite part of the business. Her biggest complaint is that she doesn’t have more time to bring all of her sketched ideas to life.

“Being this is not my full time job and I run Velvet Sunroom solely, production is slow. But, that’s the point, after all… quality products truly made with love for the customer to love.”

And for that to happen, the product has to look and feel great, which is a special challenge when it comes to lingerie.

“Lingerie must do both: be aesthetically appealing and comfortable enough to wear all day,” Bodnar says.

Marketing Intricacies

Communicating their offerings to customers is perhaps the most difficult part of any lingerie designer’s job, especially in a marketing landscape that’s so reliant on social media. Unlike most other fashion categories, lingerie imagery is tricky when it comes to predicting whether Instagram and other platforms will deem it appropriate.

“It can be hard to photograph and ensure my content isn’t flagged or shadowbanned as adult content on Instagram,” Ganster says.

Bodnar said she deals with the same issues: “We live in a very prudish society and social media is very much against showing skin. Instagram regularly removes my products even though I cover everything that I need to, and the potential of having my whole account taken down is something I face daily.”

Nevertheless, with nearly 27k followers, she is clearly doing something right.

Smooth Selling

Customer interactions come easily for both designers. Bodnar says she communicates through email, Instagram and even Twitter to discuss fit and custom requests. “I’ve even done Instagram video calls to go over customizations on pieces,” she says. “I try to remain as approachable as possible—making lingerie is something I’m passionate about and at the end of the day I want my customers to be happy.”

Ganster says her clientele has been a joy to work with across the board.

“I think when customers see that it’s just one person behind VS, I get a lot of understanding and mutual respect compared to a larger company,” she says. “To be honest, I’ve never had a bad customer exchange! I better knock on wood.”

Two San Francisco Lingerie Designers Speak Volumes