Lonely

In Auckland in 2009, the couple behind a small New Zealand fashion label started making soft-cup bras on the side. That label, Lonely, founded by Helene Morris and Steven Ferguson, became a lingerie and swimwear brand known abroad for wire-free bras and for photographing women without retouching.

From Lonely Hearts Club in Wellington

Morris and Ferguson's first business was the Lonely Hearts Club, set up in Wellington in 2003. It sold bags and printed T-shirts, not underwear. Aimee McFarlane was a co-founder and the original designer; she later became head of womenswear design at the New Zealand label Huffer.

In 2006 the company moved north to Auckland and opened a shop called Myhart on O'Connell Street in the central city. Three years later, after a restructure of the business, it released its first lingerie collection under the shorter name Lonely.

The soft-cup bra that took over the business

Morris began making soft-cup bras alongside the main clothing range in 2009. Demand for them grew faster than for the clothes, and the company shifted its focus to lingerie. The bras were mostly unpadded and underwire-free, in fine lace and mesh, much closer to the European bralette than to the molded push-up that dominated department stores at the time. The brand's own line on this was blunt: no padding, no push-ups, no G-strings.

Fit was refined with help from patternmaker Ella Sarjant, who had previously worked for Bendon, the long-established New Zealand lingerie maker. That background mattered. An unlined bra has nowhere to hide a bad pattern, and a label coming from T-shirts needed someone who knew grading and cup construction.

Lonely Girls and the unretouched photograph

The project

The brand's longest-running campaign is the Lonely Girls Project, a series of candid portraits of women wearing Lonely, largely run through Instagram. Customers were invited to send their own pictures. The images were not retouched, and the people in them were often artists, musicians and writers rather than professional models.

Famous participants

In 2017 actors Lena Dunham and Jemima Kirke posed for an untouched series for the brand. The same year Kylie Jenner was photographed in Lonely, and the autumn-winter collection was promoted with Mercy Brewer, a 56-year-old model. The brand also worked with Eva McGauley, a terminally ill teenager, to support her charity.

The critics

The approach drew criticism as well as praise. In 2018 the brand was criticized for an image of a model with self-injury scars. In 2019 critics pointed out that a label sold on body diversity still stopped at size 16 and a G cup, and that plus-size bodies were largely missing from its pictures.

Swimwear, Ponsonby and 150 stockists

Lonely added swimwear in 2014 and opened a flagship store in Ponsonby, the Auckland suburb that serves as the city's fashion strip. A Wellington store followed in late 2015. Keya Matthews handled public relations and sales to overseas buyers for many years, and the brand was eventually stocked in more than 150 shops around the world.

December 2020

On 1 December 2020 journalists David Farrier and Zoe Walker Ahwa published reporting that the owners had shared QAnon-adjacent conspiracy content and played down Covid-19. Staff told the reporters that protective equipment was not required in the shops. Morris responded that Ferguson's Facebook account had been hacked, that the couple did not fully support lockdowns, and that the company had nothing to do with their personal beliefs. For a brand whose image rested on a progressive idea of the body, it was awkward reading.

Lonely continued trading after the reports, still owned by Morris and Ferguson. It remains one of the few New Zealand lingerie labels with an international following, and its wire-free, unretouched approach of 2009 now looks like standard practice across the industry.

Last updated October 7, 2026