Oh Polly

Oh Polly is a Glasgow fashion brand founded by Claire Henderson and Mike Branney, best known for bodycon party dresses and a large, fast-moving swimwear range sold online around the world. Its operating company, Oh Polly Ltd, was incorporated in Scotland on April 27, 2015, with both founders appointed as directors that day. The business started much smaller, selling on eBay, and grew into an online label that now lists offices in Glasgow, Liverpool, Los Angeles, Dhaka and Guangzhou.

From eBay listings to a Glasgow company

The founding story the company tells is unusual for a fashion label. Henderson and Branney say they began selling on eBay to raise money for a charity in Cambodia, the Brannerson Foundation, whose name joins their surnames. The early years were not smooth. By the brand's own account, a supplier once took 30,000 pounds of its money, the kind of loss that ends most small online shops.

The Companies House record fills in the formal side. Oh Polly Ltd carries the Scottish company number SC504402 and a registered office on West George Street in Glasgow's city center. Henderson, listed as chief executive, and Branney, the managing director, remain directors, and Lorraine Henderson joined the board in October 2019. The date the eBay trading began is not stated in any source checked for this entry, so 2015 marks the incorporation rather than the first sale.

Swimwear by the hundred

Oh Polly is a fashion house first and a swimwear seller second, but the second business is large. Its swim section listed 465 items when this entry was written, priced in sterling from about 30 pounds for a bikini bottom to about 85 pounds for a beach dress. Tops come in the familiar cuts: triangle, bandeau, scoop-neck, halterneck and underwired, plus multiway tops that can be tied several ways. Bottoms run from high-rise to cheeky, many with adjustable drawstring sides, and there are one-pieces and fringed cover-ups to match.

The range is sold as mix-and-match, with tops and bottoms priced separately and coordinated by color rather than sold as fixed sets. That suits a customer who is not the same size top and bottom, and it suits a retailer too, because separates multiply the number of listings from the same print. Metallic finishes and hotfix embellishment sit alongside plainer sporty styles.

There is no lingerie line in the swim section and no dedicated intimates category in the main navigation. Oh Polly's link to this encyclopedia's subject is through swimwear and through the corset-shaped, body-skimming dresses that borrow freely from lingerie construction.

Designing in-house, making its own

Two claims set Oh Polly apart from most of the online fast-fashion pack. The first is that every design comes from a small in-house team and that the company does not buy wholesale stock from other labels to resell. The second is manufacturing. The founders say they set up two main factories of their own, which they oversee directly, and that the facilities are audited against Sedex SMETA, a widely used ethical trade audit standard. The Dhaka and Guangzhou offices sit close to that supply base.

Those claims come from the company, and the factories are not named in public materials, so they cannot be checked independently here. They are still specific enough to note. Owning production is rare among online fashion brands of this size, most of which buy finished goods from agents.

Scale and a sister brand

The company says it employs more than 350 people in the UK and about 1,500 directly worldwide. It ranked fifth among UK clothing retailers for social media engagement in 2019, by its own account, and claims a combined following of about 15 million across its brands. One of those brands is Bo+Tee, an activewear label sold alongside Oh Polly.

The natural comparisons are other social-media-led online retailers such as PrettyLittleThing and Fashion Nova, which also sell going-out clothes and swimwear to a young audience. Oh Polly's distinction is its insistence on in-house design and owned factories, and a charity that started the business. The Brannerson Foundation, the company says, has now given more than 400,000 pounds to support over 400 children and families around Siem Reap.

Last updated October 7, 2026