Britain's Boldest Full-Bust Brand
A Gap in the Market (2009)
Curvy Kate was born in 2009 from Hannah Houston's observation that the full-bust lingerie market, while technically served, was desperately lacking in personality. Existing brands for D+ cups tended toward conservative designs — functional but uninspiring. Houston set out to create a brand that gave larger-cupped women the same variety, vibrancy, and fashion-forward options that their smaller-cupped peers took for granted.
Based in London, Curvy Kate launched with an explicitly celebratory tone. This wasn't lingerie that treated large busts as problems to be engineered around. It was lingerie that embraced them — with bold prints, vivid colors, and designs that generated excitement rather than resignation.
The Star in a Bra Campaign
Curvy Kate's "Star in a Bra" competition became one of the lingerie industry's most innovative marketing initiatives. Rather than casting professional models, the brand invited real women to compete for the chance to become campaign models. The competition generated massive engagement, discovered genuinely diverse talent, and created authentic brand advocates.
Winners represented every body type, skin tone, and personal style — proving repeatedly that great lingerie looks spectacular on real women, not just industry-standard bodies.
Size Range Innovation
Curvy Kate pushed the boundaries of available sizing, offering bras in D through K cups — a range that covered the vast majority of full-bust women who had been underserved by brands stopping at DD or E. The brand's pattern engineering team developed specific constructions for each cup range, recognizing that a D-cup bra and a JJ-cup bra require fundamentally different engineering approaches.
Swimwear Success
The brand's expansion into swimwear addressed another massive gap. Full-bust women had long struggled to find swimwear that offered adequate support without industrial construction. Curvy Kate's swim line brought the same combination of engineering expertise and fashion sense to the pool and beach, with underwired bikini tops that actually supported and controlled.