Have you noticed the £2500 pledge option on our Kickstarter? Been wondering what that was about? And that I've said we'll do knicker tutorials, plus if we hit 30K we'll give away an underbust corset pattern and do tutorials for that too? Well, this is the person responsible for it all.
Meet Lou, The Littlest Deadly (she is actually genuinely both the smallest person I work with and by far the youngest, if only because I scare the wits out of most of the lingerie undergraduates). Lou is based in Sheffield, graduated from the Contour degree a couple of years ago, and has been working her way round jobs since then. If you ordered a corset from the site in the last 12 months, chances are she made it. If you had a demi-corset from the Kickstarter, she at the very least finished it off. If you have a garter-pocket or a cape, she made it. Wait, isn't there a song that goes with this? Damn, now I've got Destiny's Child on the brain.
Anyway, she'll be doing the instructions for making the Elle Knickers - we'll only get me to do them if you want to wet yourself laughing, because I can't sew for toffee. This isn't uncommon in the lingerie industry, it's a specialist set of skills so lots of brand founders aren't from a fabric or garment background.
If, by some miracle, you go for the £2500 pledge, then it will be Lou who creates you something exquisite of the corset-y nature in return. She never gets to do much with ours, which is a shame because she absolutely adores embellishing the bejeezus out of things.
She's also much nicer than me (she keeps politely asking for permission to use the workshop to make stuff for herself in or if she can use left over bits and I'm like "no, I would absolutely hate it if we got more use out of the place GOOD GOD WOMAN IT'S FINE")
If you're going for the absolutely everything pledge, she'll be making your knickers, I think. It seems fair to make something a bit fancier for folks at that level than the bottom tier, right? In all other matters, you all get the same extras, patterns, tutorials, shiny pictures, but I think at the top level a bit of extra fuss is only reasonable.
But first she has to finish 48 Fan Lace Girdles... after we've cracked those though they'll be back on the site and made to order.
Along with more corsets. I've told her she can do 1 ridiculous show piece corset to every 2 or 3 that will actually sell.
If you'd like to thank Lou for making me say yes, yes the corset pattern thing is a good idea, or see more of what she's up to, you can find her hanging out on Instagram. In real life I keep her in a damp basement (there are no dry offices in Sheffield) until we can afford somewhere better!
If you want everything in the collection AND a creation just for you from Lou, pledge here. If you want Lou to get to show you all how to sew a corset, please show the Kickstarter page to EVERYONE YOU KNOW EVER! Seriously, I've individually emailed about 9000 people in the last 3 weeks.
