Else Lingerie

Else Lingerie is a Turkish lingerie brand founded in Istanbul around 2008 by designer Ela Onur, who still runs it as founder and creative director. It is best known for graphic, architectural lace used on soft bras, bralettes and high-waisted briefs, all made in the company's own atelier in Istanbul and sold mostly outside Turkey.

Sources disagree by a year on the start date. A 2017 trade profile gives 2007; FashionNetwork, reporting on the company in 2018, gives 2008. Either way, the brand is about three years older than the 2011 date that has circulated in some directories.

Born in a bra-hardware business

Onur did not come to lingerie from fashion school. Her family ran a business making lingerie components: the straps, hooks and underwires that every bra brand buys in. She worked in the family plant from her teens, which taught her how a bra is put together from the inside before she ever designed one.

The idea for her own label came from two observations. The first was personal. As a 34D, she could not find bras that gave proper support and still looked clean and modern. The second was commercial. Her family sold parts to bra makers, yet as she has told it, there was not a single lingerie designer from Turkey with a name of their own.

She started with a small capsule collection. Its distinguishing feature was graphic lace, geometric and linear where most lingerie lace is floral, cut into styles that kept real support in larger cup sizes.

The Istanbul atelier

About a year after launching, Onur opened an atelier in Istanbul and staffed it with local women, training them in the techniques the collections required. The company has kept production there ever since. Design studio and workshop sit in the same city, so a sample can go from sketch to finished piece without leaving Istanbul.

That matters for a lace brand. Graphic lace is unforgiving: a straight line that does not meet its neighbor at a seam is obvious in a way that a floral pattern hides. Matching motifs across a cup and a band is slow work, and doing it in a house atelier rather than at a contract factory is one reason the brand sits in the premium price bracket.

Onur's husband, Cenk Turkay, later joined as chief executive, coming from the chemicals industry rather than fashion.

How a Turkish brand found buyers in Paris

Else built its business abroad. Buyers first noticed the line at Mode City and the Salon International de la Lingerie, the two big lingerie trade fairs in Paris. By 2018 it was stocked in about 120 stores worldwide, including Net-a-Porter, Galeries Lafayette, Neiman Marcus and KaDeWe in Berlin. Its strongest wholesale markets were the Benelux countries, the UK, Scandinavia and Germany.

Its own website was doing even more work. In 2018 the company said online sales made up 50 to 60 percent of revenue, and that turnover had roughly doubled in 2016 and again in 2017. After a three-month temporary shop in Los Angeles, Else planned its first permanent store on Melrose Avenue for January 2019.

The range had widened by then. Each season brought two lingerie collections of about 40 pieces, a homewear line and, from spring 2019, swimwear. Bras remained the best sellers. A 2017 review listed sizes from XS to XL for the softer pieces.

Lace from regenerated yarn

Else has made sustainability part of the product story. Many of its laces use regenerated yarn, the swimwear is cut from recycled polyamide and the packaging is made from potato starch. The company has also described using lace made from yarn spun with solar power.

Those details suit a brand whose pieces are often bought for occasions. Retailers offer several of its pale lace sets as bridal pieces, an alternative to the usual floral wedding lingerie, though Else does not present itself as a bridal specialist. Its core is still the everyday lace bra in a geometric pattern, made in Istanbul by a woman who grew up around the hooks and wires.

Last updated October 7, 2026