Can Underwear Be Skincare?

When Amelie Salas, the co-founder of the underwear label Underdays, is asked who her biggest competitors are, she doesn’t name Victoria’s Secret or Skims, but beauty brands, like Merit and Summer Fridays.

“We’re following the playbook that a lot of beauty brands, especially those clean girl beauty brands, have written,” Salas said.

It’s not that they’re hoping their target customer will swap their lip balms for underwear. Instead, Underdays is one of a handful of labels at the genesis of the “carewear” category — premiumised undergarments that carry skincare benefits — hoping to transform everyday staples into wellness accessories.

Underdays’ brief, for instance, is made from a proprietary pre- and probiotic-infused fabric, called “Underskin,” that claims to “support skin’s natural microbiome.” A “starter kit” is priced at £48 ($75). There’s also Sylva, the UK label founded by stylist and model Tallulah Harlech, which specialises in sleek, ribbed basics like leggings and dresses made for sensitive skin. The assortment began as a personal wardrobe for Harlech, who sought a wardrobe of foundational pieces that wouldn’t aggravate her psoriasis, and would look elegant layered with “the Loewe coat, the Chanel jacket or the Manolo shoe,” Harlech said.

It’s a prescient category. Brands across the fashion spectrum are experimenting with skin-caring fabrics. Underdays’ technology comes from HeiQ, a Swiss materials firm that recently collaborated with Coperni on a line of “regenerating” activewear that “acts like wearable skincare,” according to promotional copy.

As next generation drugs and procedures reconfigure bodies in real time, the worlds of beauty, wellness and fashion are continuing to converge. On Monday, Underdays’ imagined competitor Merit announced a capsule collection of activewear. Mass retailers like Uniqlo already offer sun protective clothing; how far off can moisturising T-shirts or firming, toning leggings really be?

But apparel giants have yet to get on board with the proposition. Not only do “carewear” fabrics tend to be expensive and highly processed, they’re also marketed on dubious claims, said Amanda Parkes, a materials scientist and the chief technology officer at Mothership Materials.

“I think of it a little bit as ‘over‑functionalisation,’” said Parkes. “We end up in this sustainability spiral — why am I adding a cost, a process, a chemical? And what good is it doing for my body?”

Fashion’s New Beauty Layer

In a Goopier time, the pursuit of wellness had a plausible destination — a sun-drenched kitchen stocked with farm-fresh vegetables, a battery of supplements and a combination infrared sauna-cold plunge. The target has not so much moved as shattered into a million pieces, thanks in large part to an influx of consumer brands looking to wellness-ify every corner of human life, from coffee to clothing.

A rapid increase in fabric technology has made much of the latter possible. London’s Future Fabrics Exposition, where Harlech met Sylva’s material source, featured 1,500 fabric swatches in 2016; this year, it showed more than 10,000.

Many of these fabrics advertise natural materials and skincare ingredients. “Seacell”, made from moisture-absorbing wood cellulose and antioxidant-rich seaweed, has become a popular offering from materials providers. The German firm Smartfiber’s seacell advertises the presence of “nourishing minerals” like calcium, magnesium, and vitamin E. Pyratex’s proprietary seacell, used by Sylva, comes with anti-bacterial and anti-irritation claims backed by third-party tests.

“It’s very La Mer,” Harlech said.

An Italian firm called Yaluronica sells a bodysuit made with gold particles and hyaluronic acid, while a German label called Graffenberg advertises unisex pants, shorts and shirts woven with antibacterial copper and CoQ10.

All of them are marketed on cosmetic benefits predicated on claims from fabric manufacturers, rather than independent and published tests, observed Parkes. (HeiQ, she added, seems “the furthest along” in terms of the technology.)

“I have not ever seen real testing done to show that you have actually changed somebody’s microbiome,” Parkes said.

They’re innovating fast. Some of the fabrics Harlech is interested in now didn’t exist when she launched the brand two years ago. “An absolute for drop one was making something that had weight and felt premium. Now I’m able to move into something that has more of a fluid drape,” she said. Sylva’s second drop will arrive in the fall at Dover Street Market Paris.

Carewear is still a premium, if not outright luxury product: Compare Sylva’s $500 “skinwear” dress to Skim’s $125 jersey slip, or Underdays’ $75 dollar brief to Uniqlo’s $13 Airism boyshort.

That means they could be a tough sell to consumers, who are usually price-sensitive when it comes to their basics. “There is a huge culture of supermarket multipacks that are three for a fiver,” said Underdays co-founder Oria Mackenzie.

Still, it may be awhile before these fabrics wind up in the collections of Uniqlo or Skims.

“There’s incredible use cases for medical… wound healing is one of the areas which has a lot of [potential],” Parkes said. “Otherwise, you’re solving a problem that doesn’t exist.”

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