Negative Underwear

Negative Underwear is a New York lingerie brand founded in 2014 by best friends Marissa Vosper and Lauren Schwab, who set out, in their words, to rethink an industry that felt overdesigned, underwhelming and out of touch. It makes unpadded bras, briefs, thongs and sleepwear with no bows or decorative trim, and it is best known for a sheer, single-layer mesh line called Sieve.

Two Founders and a Short Brief

The company's own founding line is unusually blunt for lingerie marketing. The industry, Vosper and Schwab said, was overdesigned and underwhelming, and their tagline since has been "making complicated things uncomplicated since 2014". The brand describes itself as female founded and operated, and the founders sign their customer letters simply "Marissa & Lauren".

Little else about the founders' earlier careers is published by the company. An earlier version of this entry described them as former fashion industry professionals and explained the brand name as a reference to the photographic negative. Neither detail appears in the company's material reviewed for this revision, so both have been removed. The name speaks for itself in any case: the brand is defined by what it leaves off.

What Negative Leaves Out

The design rule is subtraction. Negative's product pages talk about removing unnecessary bows, padding and adornment, and the garments follow through. Its bras are mostly unlined, with no foam to shape or round the bust, and the detailing is limited to seams, edges and the fabric itself.

That approach came out of a specific market moment. In 2014 the dominant American bra was a molded, padded T-shirt bra, often in a push-up version, and the lingerie aisle was decorated: a bow at the center gore, lace at the edge, a charm on the strap. Negative bet that a share of customers wanted the opposite, a bra that looked like nothing in particular and showed the body's own shape through it.

An earlier claim that the brand avoids underwire in most styles needs correcting. Negative sells both: a wireless range that includes the Sieve Non-Wire Bra and a Waffle Knit Lounge Bralette, and a set of underwired bras. The underwire gives support; the absence of padding is the constant.

The Sieve Line

Sieve is the product most associated with the brand. It is a fine, sheer mesh made into non-wire bras, thongs and dipped-front thongs, and it is sold in a long run of colors, around a dozen or more at any time. Prices sit roughly between $35 and $70 a piece, which places Negative in the premium direct-to-consumer bracket, below European luxury and well above mass market.

The Sieve Thong is one of the brand's stated signature products. Single-layer mesh shows its seams, so construction has to be clean; that is where a minimal brand either proves itself or does not.

Fabrics With Names

Negative builds its range around named fabrics rather than around collections. Alongside Sieve there are Whipped, used for the Whipped Boy Short; Waffle Knit; Club; Airis; Island; Slink; Supreme, used for the Supreme Sleep Shirt; Cashmere; Cloud Cotton for a French-cut brief; and Eclipse, a washable silk. The company says it sources from Europe's longest-standing lingerie fabric specialists, without naming mills or countries. The earlier claim that it used specifically French and Italian materials could not be confirmed.

Negative Underwear in the Press

The brand drew early coverage in Vogue, New York Magazine, Who What Wear and Refinery29, where one writer summed it up as having "stripped down the concepts of sexy lingerie to its basics". That is a fair description. Negative's real contribution was to make plainness read as a design choice at a premium price, a decade before the term quiet luxury was attached to everything from sweaters to handbags. Its sheer mesh thong in a muted color is now a familiar item from many brands; in 2014 it was close to a house signature.

Ten years on the company still sells online from New York, still with two founders' first names on its letters, and still without a bow on anything.

Last updated October 7, 2026