Releasing her own line of underwear, Underlena’s Maxine Kelly meets the brief set by her clientele.
Maxine Kelly is chasing a feeling. So are her customers.
Since opening in 2021 Underlena, her Wellington-based lingerie store, has built a dedicated customer base by stocking sensual, wearable pieces from independent
It wasn’t in the plan, Maxine insists. “From the very beginning people asked if I would be doing my own line and I had always said no there’s enough out there, I’d only do something if I really thought that there was a need for it.”
Four years of changing-room encounters with customers, though, gave her an up-close and personal sense of what unites her diverse customer base. “I was seeing that people just wanted to feel a bit hot, like all the time,” Maxine says.
Customers described how they wanted their underwear to feel, but what Maxine saw was a gap in the market – one that was triangular, black, cut high on the leg.
“I just had this shape, that was haunting me. That’s how it started, I had a shape of a brief that was in my head,
“I really wanted it to sit under my belly button, on or just under like that fleshy bit in your belly so that it wasn’t cutting in too much and then I wanted the leg to be really long – not like an 80s high cut, more just lengthy in the leg. It gives you just a really beautiful curve coming up to the hip, that feels really elegant and refined.”
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Advertise with NZME.The Brief is joined by two other styles that offer broad appeal, a String Bikini and a Thong – available in sizes XS to XXL and ethically produced in Portugal from breathable ultra-soft Tencel Lyocell, fabric crafted from sustainably sourced wood pulp in a closed-loop process.
Expanding from retailer to manufacturer is “kind of a scary moment”, Maxine admits. “Naturally, there’s a lot of imposter syndrome, but I just wanted to give it a go and see if we could create something really fab, that people would love wearing.
“People in my age group might be postpartum, coming back to their bodies, or older women too just want to feel really good in what they’re wearing on a daily basis, rather than that one very special set.”
Technically, making her vision a reality was more a mystery for Maxine but Pōneke’s close-knit creative community answered the call. After leaning on friends to answer initial “stupid questions”, Maxine did a sample run, tested on people she trusted to give good, honest feedback: friends, family and a few close customers.
“These are people throwing them in the washing machine, wearing them all the time, wearing them to yoga, wearing them to bed, wearing them how I would hope that they’d be worn.”
To get the line manufactured, though, Maxine had to widen her circle. With New Zealand proving cost-prohibitive, she found a “really fantastic” manufacturer in Portugal.
“What I really love about Portugal is it’s got a really, really long history of excellent garment manufacturing. Our fabric comes from Portugal, the elastic is made in Portugal. The product itself is made in Portugal.”
With the briefs and bikini priced at $49 and the thong at $47, Underlena’s underwear will be the lowest-cost garments they stock. Maxine says they’re pitched at a point of everyday accessibility
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Advertise with NZME.“It was important to me that you could be like ‘yeah, I can throw this in the washing machine and yeah I’ll buy three of those because they’re my favourites’. I want them to be like your favourites that you thrash.”
The line has been two years in the making, during a period of significant upheaval in the local fashion retail sector. Maxine used to host Auckland pop-ups in the back of Ponsonby Rd store Gloria, which closed permanently in April. Now straddling the retail and manufacturing sides of the industry, Maxine has seen how challenging the resource-intensive lingerie industry can be, but she points to local brands Ohen and Videris as proof it can work.
“I feel like there’s this new kind of energy in New Zealand, in terms of the lingerie industry anyway.
“I obviously see the retail side, especially down in Wellington, but I think there’s quite a bit of optimism too ... It’s easy to get a bit down in the dust about it all, but I’m grateful that there are green shoots. People are still trying to build their dreams.”
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