KENT

KENT is a Los Angeles underwear label that makes briefs, bras and basics from organic Pima cotton with no synthetic fibers, so that a worn-out pair can be composted. It was created by Stacy Anderson, a Toronto-born designer who now goes by Stacy Grace, and first went on sale in late 2016 as an exclusive with the online store The Dreslyn.

The pitch is unusual for underwear. Most brands talk about how a garment feels. KENT also talks about how it rots.

A thesis in London, a factory in Los Angeles

Anderson studied at the London College of Fashion, where her master's project around 2007 and 2008 became the first version of KENT. London was then a center of the early sustainable fashion movement, and she has said that is where the idea took shape.

The project followed her through moves to Toronto and Copenhagen before she settled in Los Angeles. There, in her words, she "met the right people, found the right factory" and started sampling. KENT launched with The Dreslyn in late 2016, designed and produced in Los Angeles. Anderson ran it from Silver Lake.

The founder's rules

Grace has described the brand as a reaction to a drawer full of scratchy, synthetic underwear that did not breathe. Her graduate work in sustainability and her experience with textile start-ups shaped the design rules, and so, she says, did a Canadian childhood of backyard gardening and composting. Some press dates the company's formal launch to 2019 or 2020, when it began selling directly online and ran a Kickstarter; the first product reached customers earlier.

Pima cotton from Peru

KENT uses GOTS-certified organic Pima cotton grown in Peru. Pima is a long-staple cotton, which spins into a smooth, strong yarn, and Peru is one of its main sources. The brand says its organic Pima uses 87 percent less water than conventional cotton and produces 45 percent fewer emissions.

The harder part is everything else. Ordinary underwear contains spandex, polyester thread and synthetic elastic, none of which breaks down. KENT's rule is no synthetics at all, so the elastic is plant-based and the whole garment can go into a compost heap.

Ninety days in the soil

The brand's best-known claim is that its underwear breaks down in compost in about 90 days. Customers are told to wash a worn pair in a synthetic-free detergent, cut it up and add it to a home compost, or use the brand's compost program. The brand runs the idea as a campaign about planting old pants back in the garden. KENT calls itself the world's first verified compostable underwear.

The Annual Brief

The signature product is a plain cotton brief sold as "The Annual Brief", a subscription that sends new pairs over the year. Grace described it as the world's first organic cotton underwear annual subscription. The logic is honest about how underwear is bought: most people replace it on a cycle, and a subscription locks that habit to one supplier.

Alongside the brief the range has grown to include organic silk underwear, soft bras and loungewear.

Shark Tank

Stacy and Jeff Grace pitched KENT on season 14 of the American television show Shark Tank and closed a deal with Daymond John: 200,000 dollars for 15 percent of the company. Press coverage of the brand has ranged from the Toronto Star to the Financial Times.

What KENT tests

KENT is small, but it tests a real question for the industry: whether stretch underwear can be made without spandex at a quality people will pay for. Next to organic basics labels such as Pact and Organic Basics, whose cotton underwear is typically blended with a little elastane, KENT is stricter. Elastane improves fit but rules out composting. KENT accepts a softer, less elastic garment in exchange for one that leaves nothing behind. Its customers are buying that trade-off, one 90-day pair at a time.

Last updated October 7, 2026