Lemonade Dolls was created to empower women. Starting with an online community, it has since evolved into the UKs first online underwear subscription service.
Choose Love
Lemonade Dolls - UK's first subscription underwear service
Led by their fearless leader (and namesake) Lemon Fuller, Lemonade Dolls is a company focused on empowerment. Not only the women that are a part of their community, but also refugees in need.
As the UK's first subscription underwear service, they have been revolutionizing the industry and doing so with a great attitude and great company values.
Q and A
Why was Lemonade Dolls Founded?
Lemonade started as a community online. It grew from an Instagram account I created in the aim to make women feel good. The account grew really quickly and I had a community of women ready for my next move. That’s when LD Underwear was born.
I could never find underwear I liked and I hated the Victoria secret movement. It was everything I stood against and I realized I wasn’t alone. I started producing samples, hiring team members and a year and a half later we’d secured investment and voila, Lemonade underwear was born!
I wanted to create an underwear brand that makes us feel limitless, and supported us and in styles and sizes that we love. For me, underwear is your body armour, a secret weapon, powerful; I wanted to create underwear which made people feel good, look amazing and feel strong for ourselves. I’ve created a brand that does just that.
What are the values of the company?
We make underwear to make you feel strong, empowered and good from the inside out. Our products are designed for every person, shape, size and story; ultra-comfortable fits and supportive styles without forgoing our signature bold prints and bright colours.
Lemonade Dolls does not retouch any photos, why is that important?
We celebrate natural beauty in all forms.
Being a part of the retail industry it’s vital for us to not add to any damaging beauty standards or dictate what is and isn’t ‘beautiful’. For too long the media has perpetuated this warped and unattainable image of the perfect woman; now social media has taken this practice even further, with filters and photoshopped images still very much dominating visual content.
To us, keeping our imagery un-retouched allows our customers to relate to our product, knowing what they buy will look just as incredible on them as it does on the models on our website.
There is a real relationship when you see our models with the same bumps, scars, stretch marks or cellulite as you. We all have those features, so pretending they don’t exist is just plain ridiculous. We feel better when we’re united in those aspects, where we don’t feel like the odd one out or like there’s something wrong with us.
We decided to highlight it. We’re not just a brand but a community and platforming natural, realistic beauty standards is a huge part of that.
Why is it important to have a transparent supply chain?
When you’re making products that promote equality and empowerment, you should make sure that ethos is being continued all along the production process and supply chain, not just for the end customer. Treating our suppliers well, knowing that they’ll in turn treat their workers with the same fairness, is integral to the honesty and transparency which surrounds our products.
Any factory we work with is carefully checked out to ensure their health and safety measures are up to code, there is no discrimination, zero child labour, and that all employees are paid above minimum wage.
How is Lemonade Dolls a Slow Fashion Brand?
The earth and undies, the two things we can’t live without. We’re constantly seeing brands using big eco buzzwords but one of the most important things to us is putting these words into action, and not just greenwashing or jumping on the bandwagon.
Instead, we’re putting in the work behind the scenes and building Lemonade’s core sustainability values from the ground up so they’re intertwined with our brand identity. Our products are made to last, made from high-quality materials that can be washed over and over again.
We hate wasting perfectly good products so we don’t do limited edition drops or seasonal products. Instead of constantly churning out new products every month we’ve developed our core collection of styles to stay on the site for a long time to avoid holding onto masses of leftover stock or wasting products. We never over sample and only order what we need, and any leftover samples we either sell or gift to our amazing models.
How did you pick Choose Love as a cause partner?
Choose Love’s core values of empowering refugees and displaced people across the globe aligned with us and our brand, not to mention the whole team found the work that they do endlessly inspiring on a personal level.
We noticed a big gap in their donations to refugees, there were plenty of clothes, but not a lot of underwear, which we believe everyone is entitled to, no matter their situation.
How have you been supporting Choose Love to date?
Since we started working with Choose Love in February 2022 we’ve donated over 5000 pairs of underwear to female refugees in Greece, and we raised over £3.5k in donations through a sponsored charity Psycle ride event and Tit Talk.
More recently we’ve introduced ways for our customers to donate through our website; whenever you take out one of our memberships or spend £30, we donate a pair of underwear in your name to Choose Love and we’ve added a donation section in our checkout where customers can donate a custom amount whilst placing an order. This is what change looks like.
I have also been out to the centres/ camps in Greece that have received some of our undies to really understand the crisis first-hand. I can't wait to grow the business so we can do even more.
Are there any other initiatives that you plan to undertake in the future?
We’re always exploring new and better ways of reducing our environmental impact, we know how hard it is to be 100% sustainable but putting it at the forefront of your ethos and making it something you strive for is something we’ve made our mission.
We’ve recently re-developed all our packaging to 100% biodegradable or recyclable materials and we’re setting up an initiative with Terracycle where our customers can recycle their old and unwanted underwear.
Supporting Choose Love with Lemonade Dolls
Lemonade Dolls are donating a pair of undies to Choose Love for every order over £30. In addition, customers on their online store have the ability to add additional donations to Choose Love.
How to Get Involved?
For Customers
If you are looking to support Lemonade Dolls and Choose Love ... check out their online store and where it all started on their Instagram.
For Brands
If you are an online store and would like to incorporate real social or environmental impact into your brand you can reach out to us directly at support@virtueimpact.com or if you are on Shopify you can take a look at our 5-star-rated Shopify app.
For Charities/Causes
If you are a charity or social cause that would like to sign up to Virtue to allow online brands to fundraise for you then let us know at support@virtueimpact.com
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