Freya

Launched by the Eveden Group in 1998, Freya is a British lingerie, swimwear and sports bra brand for fuller busts, owned since 2012 by the Japanese lingerie maker Wacoal. It sells bras, cup-sized swimwear and activewear in B to K cups, and its parent's British factory is the old Co-operative corset works in Desborough, Northamptonshire.

Two corrections to the earlier version of this entry. Freya launched in 1998, not 2002, according to the brand list for Wacoal's portfolio. And its home is Desborough in Northamptonshire, not Desford in Leicestershire; the two names are easy to confuse, and the factory is not.

Eveden and the Desborough corset factory

Freya's parent company had deep roots. Eveden was founded in 1920, and by the 2000s it had built a portfolio aimed squarely at fuller busts. Freya's sister labels were Fantasie, a full-figure line, and later Elomi, launched in 2008 for larger band sizes, and Goddess, an American full-figure brand Eveden bought in 2002.

The physical base is unusual. The Desborough Co-operative Society, founded in 1863 by local men who wanted to protect workers from exploitative agents and employers, built a corset and lingerie factory in the town. That factory, including the original Victorian building, is now owned by Wacoal Eveden and still makes lingerie and swimwear, with Eveden's warehouse and UK factory shop across the road. A housing estate nearby is called Desbeau Park, after a lingerie range once made in the same works.

Freya's brief: fashion in big cups

Freya's role inside Eveden was to be the young, fashion-led label in a portfolio built around fit. The brand's own pitch is that it makes the most fashion-forward lingerie, bra-sized swimwear and activewear it can, and that its full range goes up to a K cup. The name is shared with the Norse goddess of love, though the company does not, in the material we found, explain the choice.

The approach is simple to state and hard to execute. A plunge bra in a GG cup needs the same visual lightness as one in a B cup, while carrying several times the weight. That means multi-part cups, firmer bands and wider wings, hidden inside designs that still look current. Freya's current catalog is sorted the way a full-bust shopper thinks: plunge, molded and padded plunge, side support, underwired and soft-cup styles.

Deco and Offbeat

Two collection names recur across Freya's site. Deco is the long-running molded plunge family, and it has its own swimwear counterpart, Deco Swim, so a customer who knows her Deco size can buy a bikini top cut on the same block. Offbeat is another named collection in the current range.

Swimwear and Freya Active

Freya's second business is swimwear, sold by bra size rather than S, M and L. For a woman in a G cup, a bikini sized to her bra is the difference between a swimsuit that supports and one that does not. The current range covers underwire swimsuits, plunge bikinis and print collections.

The third line is Freya Active, sports bras and activewear. Wacoal's brand summary notes that Freya's sports bras ran up to an H cup when its lingerie and swim went to K. The current site lists underwire and soft-cup sports bras and says the whole Freya offer, lingerie, swim and Active, now spans B to K.

Under Wacoal since 2012

In 2012 Wacoal, founded in Japan in 1949 by Koichi Tsukamoto, bought the Eveden Group and with it Freya, Fantasie, Elomi and Goddess. The British business now trades as Wacoal Europe, which describes itself as a leader in the A to K cup, 28 to 48 back-size market. Wacoal's own manufacturing is centered on a plant in Vietnam opened in 1997, while Desborough remains the British base.

The acquisition did not dilute the British label. Freya still sells under its own name in the UK, the United States and elsewhere, and still treats a K cup as a size to design for rather than an exception to apologize for.

Last updated October 28, 2026