Meet the inclusive underwear brand disrupting the fashion industry

This arti­cle is part of our Going Against the Grain series, which tells the sto­ries of com­pa­nies bold enough to break busi­ness norms and try out new ideas. To explore the rest of the series, head here.

Nubian Skin was born out of founder Ade Hassan’s strug­gles to find lin­gerie that matched her skin tone. When­ev­er she asked in-store for a nude bra, she would inevitably be hand­ed some­thing beige. Then, in 2011, she had what she describes as her “light­bulb moment”.

“I was annoyed I couldn’t ever find skin-tone inti­mates and I knew lots of oth­er peo­ple were find­ing the same thing,” she recalls. “I didn’t under­stand why they didn’t exist, so I set up my own busi­ness to meet the needs of peo­ple of colour.”

Has­san freely admits the deci­sion to set up her own lin­gerie com­pa­ny “was naïve”. She had no back­ground in fash­ion and no expe­ri­ence in man­u­fac­tur­ing or retail. But she recog­nised that there was a huge under­served mar­ket and she under­stood the needs of these cus­tomers. 

Has­san recalls how, dur­ing the first pho­to shoot for Nubian Skin, she over­heard the four Black mod­els talk­ing excit­ed­ly about her prod­ucts. They were shar­ing sto­ries of how they pre­vi­ous­ly had to dye their under­wear using tea or cof­fee to try to make it match their skin tone.

“That was my first indi­ca­tion that this was some­thing which real­ly res­onat­ed with peo­ple,” she says. “I put an image of these four women wear­ing our bras on social media and it went viral.”

Nubian Skin now has 162,000 fol­low­ers on Insta­gram, is stocked in Asos, Nord­strom, Browns and Net-A-Porter and Bey­on­cé has worn it on her world tour. But tak­ing on the incum­bents and build­ing a suc­cess­ful busi­ness has not been easy. “It’s been a jour­ney of ups and downs, which sums up entre­pre­neur­ship in gen­er­al,” Has­san says. 

The challenges of being a disruptive brand

It took Has­san three years from the idea of the com­pa­ny to launch­ing it. This involved devel­op­ing her pro­pri­etary colours, vis­it­ing fac­to­ries, speak­ing to man­u­fac­tur­ers, reg­is­ter­ing the busi­ness and fil­ing for trade­marks.

“It was quite frus­trat­ing at first because I didn’t have any con­nec­tions in the indus­try, so I had to do a lot of my own research,” Has­san says. “It was a bap­tism of fire because I had no clue how to even make a bra when I start­ed.

“It’s impor­tant to pro­tect your intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, espe­cial­ly if you’re a first mover,” she says. “Sort out trade­marks, reg­is­ter the com­pa­ny prop­er­ly and make sure your legals are tight because it’s vital to always pro­tect your brand.” Tak­ing time to ensure all these ele­ments are in place is impor­tant and Has­san advis­es oth­er entre­pre­neurs to do the same.

Has­san became acute­ly aware of the impor­tance of this after brands start­ed order­ing Nubian Skin’s prod­ucts, only to attempt to copy the designs. “Some peo­ple weren’t will­ing to sup­port the busi­ness but were more than hap­py to rip it off. But that’s busi­ness and that’s fash­ion,” she says. “Those were the peo­ple who weren’t will­ing to acknowl­edge the con­tri­bu­tion we’d made but want­ed to jump on the band­wag­on because we were get­ting a lot of buzz.”

Improving inclusion in the lingerie business

Many of the biggest lin­gerie brands are run by peo­ple who are either white, male or quite often both. Has­san says that this can skew their per­spec­tive and influ­ence their deci­sions. “Clear­ly, white men will nev­er look in the mir­ror and say, ‘That doesn’t match my skin’,” she says.

“Unless you have peo­ple who have that expe­ri­ence in the room where the deci­sions are made, it’s a fore­gone con­clu­sion,” she adds. “Once you’re around for a while, peo­ple begin recog­nis­ing that your brand has some­thing going for it.”

Dis­rupt­ing an indus­try is often expen­sive. For Nubian Skin, all its prod­ucts are cus­tom-dyed because the fab­ric sup­pli­ers don’t have the colours it needs.

On top of the expense of research­ing and cre­at­ing her own colours, sup­pli­ers required a min­i­mum spend to make it worth­while to pro­duce cus­tom fab­rics. A fab­ric in a tra­di­tion­al colour can be ordered per 50 metres, while Nubian Skin had to order 1,000 metres of each of its colours. 

Has­san says: “That’s not much of an invest­ment for a large com­pa­ny but for a small busi­ness those costs start to add up. It’s an expen­sive exer­cise once you account for the devel­op­ment of the prod­uct and the man­u­fac­tur­ing of it, which is why it hurts when oth­er brands rip off our colours.”

Despite the many chal­lenges, Has­san says that found­ing her own busi­ness has been a reward­ing expe­ri­ence. “It was incred­i­ble when we did launch and peo­ple could buy the prod­uct. We had some real­ly amaz­ing mes­sages from peo­ple, say­ing things like, ‘I’ve wait­ed 40 years for this’ and ‘thank you for help­ing me feel seen’.”

Her advice to any­one else who has a sim­i­lar­ly dis­rup­tive busi­ness idea would be sim­ply to “go for it”. “If you’re dis­rupt­ing an indus­try, it will be hard­er than you think. There will be rea­sons no one has done it before, so be pre­pared for a lot of bar­ri­ers,” she says.

Although this can be quite demor­al­is­ing, for Has­san there’s noth­ing worse than regret. “Even though it has been chal­leng­ing, I’m so proud of what we’ve accom­plished.”

Despite being a rel­a­tive­ly small brand, Nubian Skin has helped to change con­ver­sa­tions about rep­re­sen­ta­tion and inclu­siv­i­ty in the fash­ion indus­try and encour­aged larg­er brands to devel­op ranges of nude under­wear for peo­ple of colour. 

“My goal has always been for women of colour to have the same access to skin-tone inti­mates as any oth­er woman. I’ve seen a pos­i­tive change in the indus­try over the past eight years,” Has­san says. “It’s some­thing I’m real­ly proud of play­ing a small part in.”