The Curve Collection & Body Positivity

We always listen and read our customers comments, emails, tweets and posts about us and take these on board – and we definitely noticed that bigger sizes were in high demand! As a small company, each new size range is a risky business; all that extra stock costs money upfront for fitting, developing, shooting and warehousing. However, being a small company definitely has it’s perks; we are able to listen to your suggestions, and this time we took the plunge and created our debut Curve Collection!

At Playful Promises we honestly, wholeheartedly believe that lingerie is for everybody, which is why we decided to move forward with a plus size range – especially after the success of our fuller bust collection. As far as we are aware, we are the first indie lingerie brand to create a collection in the UK 18-24 size set! The plus size market is saturated with simply functional lingerie – which are great for the every day, but there's barely anything truly sexy and revealing! We created a range with the same innovation and style as our core range. Everybody deserves to wear whatever makes them feel sexy and confident, and that was the aim of this new collection.

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Which brings us to something very dear to us all – Body positivity! The thing about the fashion and lingerie industry is that it can be quite alienating to many with a lack of size ranges and model diversity. As a result of this, the industry perpetuates often-unrealistic body ideals in a way that isn’t necessarily direct, but still damaging. Representation is important. When you don’t see yourself represented in some way, it can cause feelings of exclusion, and sometimes people do not “allow” themselves to wear something they think is nice because it seems as if it isn’t made for somebody like them. This rings true particularly for lingerie, which is often seen as something only for busty, thin women, and often exclusionary to those with smaller chests or bigger sizes.

Being made to feel as if your body is weird or undesirable in some way is terrible for self-acceptance and happiness. It can encourage you to talk down to and about yourself, saying things like “I couldn’t wear that, because of my ____”, or “I wish I had ____ like that model”. It can make people want to change things about themselves in a way that could potentially be unhealthy, mentally or physically.

As a brand, we try to avoid making anyone feel excluded by encouraging everyone to post images of themselves in our lingerie, and reposting various sizes and body types whenever possible! One of our favourite things is seeing our customer pictures and showing how lingerie works on different people. With models, we try to make informed choices about who we want to represent our brand. We are limited to sample sizes (along with photoshoot and model costs), but are actively trying to diversify more. We are also wary of the way others talk about people’s bodies on our social media; we don't put up with any body snark here! And finally, with the Curve collection we hope that by expanding our size range, we can show that even more bodies deserve nice lingerie.

So what can you do to practice body positivity? Here’s a few tips that we’ve found have worked for us!

·         Dressing up in your fave clothes/lingerie and taking some fire selfies (even if you don’t share them with anyone)

·         Reminding yourself that you are more than your appearance. Think of positive aspects of your personality and say them like a personal mantra when you’re feeling low. Remind yourself that you are kind/friendly/intelligent/empathetic/funny etc.

·         Speak positively about yourself. Try not to put yourself down in front of others – it doesn’t make you conceited to say something nice about yourself every once in a while!

·         Speak positively about others. This helps with the above!

·         Know the difference between mental and physical health. Eating “clean” all the time might be good for your body, but if it makes you obsessive about your food intake, then it’s no longer healthy. Remember you’re only human, you’re allowed “off” days if eating healthy and exercising is a thing you want to do for yourself. Otherwise, focus on your happiness instead!

Do you have any personal ways to practice self-love and body positivity? Leave them in the comments below!