Nuudii Systems creates its own category of “boobwear”
How many times have you put on an article of clothing that actually made you feel better about your body? For many women, that phenomenon is a rarity — especially over the past year, when comfort has been priority No. 1. Although you might feel some very real love toward your sweatpants, that doesn’t mean they make you feel beautiful.
According to Annette Azan, founder and CEO of Nuudii System, a Nuudii is that comfortable piece of clothing that can actually make you feel proud of your body.
“That is the most thrilling thing for me as a woman and also as a woman working in fashion — that a product could get women to feel alright about themselves,” she said. “The greatest thing we can do is to get women to understand the power that their bodies have. The way they feel about themselves is huge.”
Azan is a longtime industry vet who graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) and went on to work on the business side of fashion. She has always been mentored by strong women, she said, including designers Dianne Benson, Norma Kamali and Donna Karan. But it wasn’t until she was presented with a significant design need — for her own wedding, no less — that she took a dip into the world of design herself.
“I was wearing a wedding dress that was super thin,” she explained. “Everything showed through it — even those pasties. Two weeks before, I even bought another wedding dress in case it didn’t work.”
But Azan did make it work, bringing the first Nuudii into existence. That original model was made from a nylon-based fabric and featured halter-style straps — a recognizable parent prototype to the present-day product.
“It’s a fabric that was never used for boobs,” she said. “That was the difference. This fabric had 360-degree stretch, and it was so sheer that it basically hugged my natural shape. It also felt like skin. And that’s all the aspects that I needed.”
It’s because of that natural feel that Azan never calls a Nuudii a “bra” — it doesn’t shape or lift or support as much as a traditional bra, so it falls into its own category, she explained.
“I didn’t create it thinking, ‘I need a bra.’ I created it thinking, ‘I need something for under this wedding dress,’” she said.
The bra as most women think of it was invented in France in the late 19th Century, and it made its way to the United States when Mary Phelps Jacob (later known as Caresse Crosby) patented a similar design in 1914. The basic design — though it’s been made with cone cups, crossing straps and push-up padding — has remain relatively unchanged for the last century.
The lack of innovation in the bra’s basic function is what has made women expect to look a certain way, Azan pointed out. Traditional bra makers market smoothness, nipplelessness and perkiness — things that most boobs just naturally aren’t.
“It was — not to be trite — kind of an ‘ah ha!’ moment for me,” Azan said. “I kind of looked around the room and thought, ‘why has no one come up with this?’”
The first hurdle, it turned out, was translating what began as a hand-sewn product into a manufacturable prototype. It took three and a half years to work out a system with a U.S.-based factory that could make Nuudiis just right.
“If anyone knows the bra industry — the bra industry’s like suits,” she said, noting that both require meticulous fitting. “There’s no other complicated part of the body like breasts. Everyone has different shaped breasts, period. Even sometimes on your own body.”
Nuuddi “boobwear” uses what Azan calls the “T-system,” which is based on the natural fit of what someone might want under a T-shirt. It’s about everyday wear, she said, though the double straps can be adjusted to accommodate one-sleeve garments and other unusual necklines.
“Size is the biggest problem in the bra industry,” Azan continued. “Because you can’t take something that has a structure and think that everybody’s boobs are going to fit into that. Even our own breasts — on a daily basis — are different sizes.”
The lack of hardware and the Nuudii fabric also means that the sizing can be totally different. Instead of using a numbered band size and lettered cup size, Nuudii System has a double letter sizing system that represents the band and cradle. The original launch included just SS, MM and LL (representing small, medium and large), but the size offerings continue to expand.
“We weren’t even sure if the larger sizes were going to work,” Azan admitted, but in development, her team asked over 500 women to give feedback, and they discovered that women that normally wear a 36G still felt comfortable. “There’s no hard sizing system that says, ‘It only goes up to this,’ because everyone is different.”
“We have seen, with our trial wearers, women who were vulnerable at the beginning, and a year after wearing Nuudii, they call us up and they said, ‘You know what? We wear Nuudii now to work.,’” she continued. “They kind of sink into feeling right about themselves.”
This spring, Nuudii System will be releasing some new models and some additional colors and prints, things which could “never be translated into a bra or bralette,” she said. Azan hopes that by then, her team will actually be able to keep supply up to meet demand. The Nuudii System website launched last February just before the pandemic, so right when orders began to flood in, they faced manufacturing shortages. That was not an unfamiliar problem, either; when the brand first launched on Kickstarter, they sold about $750,000 of merchandise in 30 days.
“Introducing a new category within essential products for female consumers is daring and reminiscent of the entry of leggings into the mainstream market,” said Kirsten Horning, principal at XRC Labs, an investor in Nuudii System. “Having launched with an exceptionally successful Kickstarter campaign, the team has proven that there is massive customer demand for a new approach to bras, and we believe Nuudii System is the brand to deliver the solution.”
As more Nuudii options come out, Azan also hopes to establish product in more physical locations. Nordstrom picked up Nuudii System in January, and Nuudii System plans to increase its retail presence in airports, yoga studios and boutiques — places where the utility of a Nuudii could come in handy.
Still, Azan emphasized that she feels that she embodies her mission as much as ever. As a woman raised in a family of other strong, body-positive women, she wants to continue to give all people with boobs the opportunity to love their natural shapes.
“If Nuudii can make [women] love themselves for what they are, make them feel alright — they don’t even have to love themselves, they just need to accept themselves — I’ve done my job,” she said.
