Parade

Parade was an American underwear brand founded in New York in 2019 by Cami Téllez and Jack DeFuria. It sold colorful briefs, thongs and bralettes online, mostly to women in their teens and twenties, in sizes XS to 3XL. Ariela and Associates, a long-established intimates manufacturer, bought it in July 2023, and in October 2025 the brand announced that it was closing.

A Columbia dropout and a group chat

Téllez left Columbia University after seven semesters studying English and art history to start the company. She is the daughter of Colombian immigrants, and she built Parade's identity around the people she felt mainstream lingerie had ignored: young women of color, larger bodies, and shoppers who found the Victoria's Secret fantasy faintly ridiculous. The company raised about 3.5 million dollars from venture investors early on.

The product was deliberately modest. Soft knit briefs in a few cuts, a cheeky, a thong, a high-rise, and simple wire-free bras, made with recycled fabrics. At launch HYPEBAE described it as a brand built on recycled materials, size range and a partnership with Planned Parenthood. The size range of XS to 3XL was unusual for a startup in 2019.

Color as the marketing plan

What made Parade visible was color. The brand dropped limited runs of underwear in saturated and pastel shades on a calendar, the way sneaker brands release shoes, and its customers photographed them. The pictures did the advertising. For a while the look of Parade, bright briefs on a bedroom floor in hard flash, was the visual shorthand for direct-to-consumer underwear.

Growth by collaboration

The company leaned on partnerships to stay in the conversation. In December 2020 it released a collaboration with Juicy Couture, the brand that had defined velour tracksuits two decades earlier. In autumn 2021 it opened a shop in SoHo. By August 2022 it was selling through Urban Outfitters and counted around 10,000 brand ambassadors posting about it.

In February 2023 Parade announced its first underwire bras, a serious step for a brand that had lived on knit basics, since a wired bra needs band and cup sizing and real fit work. A month later Parade arrived in about 400 Target stores. The move put a startup that had marketed itself against the mall into one of the biggest mass-market chains in the country.

The sale to Ariela and Associates

In July 2023 Parade was acquired by Ariela and Associates International, a New York intimates company. Téllez stepped down from her role when the sale went through. Reports at the time and afterward described a startup that had raised money to chase growth and found that growth expensive.

Under the new owner, the brand's comment sections changed tone. Press coverage of the closure reported that once-loyal customers complained about declining quality and slow customer service in the two years after the sale.

October 2025

On October 25, 2025, Parade posted a statement on Instagram announcing that it would close after six years. By October 28 its website no longer processed orders. There was no public bankruptcy filing.

The closure fits a pattern. Many of the direct-to-consumer underwear brands founded between 2015 and 2020 were built on cheap social media advertising and venture capital, and both became harder to get. Independent labels without a large parent, unlike Aerie inside American Eagle, were often sold to manufacturers or shut.

What Parade left behind

Parade's lasting effect is on how basic underwear is sold rather than how it is made. Its briefs were not technically novel. The colors, the drops, the size range and the casting of ordinary-looking models were quickly copied by bigger labels, which is the usual fate of a good idea in this business. The brand itself lasted six years, from a student's pitch to an Instagram goodbye.

Last updated October 7, 2026