Thunderpants

Thunderpants is a New Zealand underwear label started in May 1995 by Josie Bidwill and her flatmate Victoria McKenzie while they were textile design students in Nelson. It is now run by Josie and her sister Sophie Bidwill from Martinborough in the Wairarapa, and it still sews its organic cotton underwear in New Zealand. Older summaries that place the founding in Wellington in 2008 are wrong on both counts.

A Student Flat in Nelson, 1995

The idea came out of a fashion and textile course at Nelson Polytechnic. Bidwill and McKenzie disliked the women's briefs on sale at the time: cut to look feminine on a hanger, skimpy on fabric, and the wrong shape for the body that actually had to wear them. So they drafted their own pattern, built what amounted to a small factory inside the flat, and started selling.

The name was already in the family. Growing up on a farm at Kahutara, the Bidwill children called a pair of large bloomers "thunderpants", and their sister Kate is credited with attaching the word to the business. It suits the product. These are not dainty knickers and were never meant to be.

From Nelson to Martinborough

In 1997 the partnership split geographically. McKenzie moved to Auckland, and Josie moved to Martinborough to be near family. Sophie, an artist and ceramicist, joined her there, and the company has been a two-sister operation ever since. Production moved through Palmerston North and Levin before settling with a team of machinists in Carterton, a few minutes up the road.

Before the website, Thunderpants ran a mail-order business with printed catalogs. It also kept a shop on Kitchener Street in Martinborough until 2018, when the business went online only. Its wholesale reach is modest by any standard: roughly a hundred stockists across New Zealand.

Thunderpants and the Flat-Fronted Brief

The house style is a high-rise, full-coverage cut, close to what this encyclopedia files under full brief. Sophie Bidwill's own description is blunt: they are not sexy, they fit the body where they are meant to. The brand's line is that the underwear is designed for the wearer, not the viewer.

The pattern is the asset. It sits snugly, stays put and is drafted to stop the garment riding up, which is a rarer achievement in a brief than most labels admit. Today the range comes in two fronts, flat and pouch, and the company has dropped gendered labels from its marketing. The fabric is a stretch cotton jersey, about 90 percent organic cotton and 10 percent spandex.

Prints first, colors second

The first runs came in colors called aubergine, rust and broccoli, screen-printed with limpets, artichokes and hearts. Josie Bidwill had been screen printing since her teens, and the prints became the brand's signature: native birds, vegetables, sea creatures, jokes. The best seller, tellingly, is plain black.

Organic Cotton Before It Was Fashionable

Thunderpants switched to organic cotton early, and the company says some customers pushed back at the time. It stuck with the decision because conventional cotton is heavy on water and pesticides. The yarn now comes in as certified Fairtrade organic cotton, and the brand says it is moving toward regeneratively farmed cotton. Fabric has been knitted in Levin.

The labor side is documented too. Thunderpants is accredited as a Living Wage employer, and it has had its carbon footprint calculated by Thinkstep, with the figure checked by Catalyst. A 2018 profile put the company at about five full-time equivalents and 50,000 items sewn a year. That is tiny next to a mass label, and it is exactly why the business has survived: slow growth, a loyal customer base and no attachment to the fashion calendar.

The Portland Offshoot

The brand traveled to the United States through family, as it did everything else. Jen of Jen's Organic Baby in Portland, Oregon, was sent a pair by her sister, who had moved to New Zealand around 2005. In 2016 Thunderpants USA opened in Portland, cutting and sewing the same patterns locally from New Zealand-knitted organic cotton. The New Zealand workshop kept sewing its own stock.

Why It Belongs in a Lingerie Encyclopedia

Thunderpants sits at the opposite end of the shelf from push-up bras and lace thongs, and that is the point of including it. It belongs to a small group of makers, alongside labels such as Organic Basics in Copenhagen, that treat underwear as a textile and labor question first and a fashion one second. Where Thunderpants differs is age. In May 2025 the company marked thirty years in business, still owned by the two Bidwill sisters and still sewing in the Wairarapa, where it started its second life in 1997.

Last updated October 7, 2026