Chamela

Chamela is a Colombian women's fashion label from Medellín, launched in 1996, that sells lingerie, swimwear, activewear and shapewear at mid-market prices. It belongs to Chamela S.A.S., a privately held company in the department of Antioquia, and today sells in more than 20 countries.

The company describes the brand as aimed at a younger, fresher customer than the conservative underwear that dominated Colombian shelves when it appeared. That positioning still shows: the catalog leans on bright prints, cut-out swimsuits and coordinated sets rather than heavy foundation garments.

Medellín, 1996: where Chamela started

Medellín is the capital of Colombian textiles. The city built its fortune on cotton mills in the early twentieth century, and by the 1990s it had become the base for a dense cluster of intimate-apparel makers, from large exporters to small family workshops across the Aburrá Valley. Leonisa, the best-known Colombian lingerie name abroad, is also a Medellín company. Chamela came out of the same industrial soil.

According to the company's own account, the Chamela brand was launched in 1996. A company history circulated by Chamela also traces the underlying business to a partnership formed in June 1989, which suggests the label was created by an existing underwear maker looking for a second, younger line. Founder names are not published.

From underwear to beach bags

The first products were women's underwear. Around 2002 the company widened the range into sportswear, sleepwear, swimwear, beach cover-ups, sandals and bags. That expansion matters for understanding the brand. In Colombia, swimwear and lingerie are sold side by side in the same stores, cut by the same pattern makers and often sewn on the same lines. Chamela treats them as one business.

Current company material lists five product lines: swimwear, a kids' line, workout clothing, lingerie, and shapewear with what it calls protective garments. Shapewear is the only line for which the company offers full-package manufacturing to outside clients, a detail that places it inside Colombia's large contract-manufacturing trade for fajas, the compression garments the country exports in volume.

How Chamela sells

The distribution model is broader than most Western lingerie brands would attempt. Chamela sells through:

• its own stores, 26 in Colombia according to the company's current figures
• chain retailers, department stores and multibrand boutiques
• catalog sales through independent sellers
• its website, chamela.co, plus WhatsApp, Instagram and online marketplaces

Catalog selling deserves a note. Across Latin America, door-to-door and catalog networks move a large share of underwear, and Chamela says this channel alone supports about 2,000 indirect jobs in Colombia. For a museum used to the European department-store model, this is the clearest difference in how lingerie actually reaches women in the region.

People and production

The company reports 565 direct employees, 85 percent of them women, plus more than 780 indirect workers. That puts it in the middle tier of Colombian apparel firms: much smaller than Leonisa, but far larger than the boutique labels of Bogotá.

Chamela outside Colombia

Earlier company statements said close to half of production was destined for export, with buyers in Venezuela, Costa Rica, Panama, Spain, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Bolivia, the United States, Aruba and Curaçao. Its ProColombia export profile now lists more than 20 countries. Physical stores outside Colombia are in Guatemala City, Mexico City, Morelia and Cancún, and a US online shop sells the swimwear and lingerie to American customers.

The brand also sponsors Colombia's National Beauty Contest, the Cartagena pageant that selects the country's Miss Universe entrant. In Colombia, that is a mainstream marketing choice rather than a fringe one, and it fits a label whose swimwear is built for display.

Where it sits in the Colombian market

Colombian lingerie has a reputation abroad for one thing above all: construction for a curvier figure, with firm control briefs, sculpting bodysuits and push-up cups. Chamela participates in that, especially through its shapewear line, but its core is lighter. Most of the range is fashion underwear and swimwear in seasonal colors, priced for a young customer buying several pieces a year rather than one investment bra.

That makes Chamela a useful reference point for the region's middle market: a Medellín maker that grew from a single underwear line into a full women's wardrobe company, and that still sells as much through catalogs and phone messages as through its own shop windows.

Last updated October 1, 2026