THE FRIDAY INTERVIEW: PRIYA DOWNES OF NUDEA CELEBRATES 7TH YEAR

Independent British B Corp, Nudea, celebrates seven years of growth and innovation as it looks ahead to its next chapter and a major new collaboration with Etam. Underlines chats with owner Priya Downes on the highs and occasional lows (!)  following its selection as one of just three labels for Etam Groupe’s We Dare Lab. Nudea worked alongside Etam to develop an innovative bra concept that Priya and the team had already been developing internally, designed to combine comfort, support and lift with a seamless finish for fuller busts.

Life before Nudea…

My background was in luxury fashion, which gave me a really strong foundation in craftsmanship, heritage and, importantly, valuing quality over quantity. I learned that all great brands ultimately start with great product and that’s something that has stayed with me throughout Nudea.

The idea for Nudea really came from my own experience. I was between children at the time — I have three kids now — and I realised I hadn’t been measured for a bra since I was a teenager. I had absolutely no idea what size I was and had no desire to go into a lingerie store and be fitted.

I was shopping online for pretty much my entire wardrobe, so it seemed strange that underwear was one of the few categories where the online experience was so difficult. I felt there was a real opportunity to create a brand that spoke to the modern woman and made buying underwear online much easier and less intimidating.

Why underwear-nightwear?

It really started with that frustration around underwear. I felt there was something missing from my own underwear drawer, but also from the way women were expected to shop for underwear.

If you’re shopping online, how do you know what size you are? How do you understand the difference between shapes? And how do you know what something is actually going to look like on a body that isn’t the very narrow definition of what the industry had traditionally shown us.

Breasts come in so many different shapes and sizes and I felt that the shopping experience could be quite intimidating as a result.

So, we built Nudea to make that experience much easier. We developed our trademark Fit Tape to help women understand their size at home and we were very deliberate about the way we represented women on the website. I wanted to show different bodies, different sizes and different shapes, rather than the very cookie-cutter imagery that had been the industry standard for so long.

The idea was always that it should feel easy, modern and inclusive, a place where you could understand the product, understand your fit and ultimately feel more confident buying underwear online.

And this was pre-Covid, which is quite interesting when you look at how much the industry has changed since then. Thankfully, it’s moved on considerably and it’s been really positive to see so many great brands celebrating women and showing much more diversity in their imagery and sizing.

For us, though, that was the starting point: great product, a much better fit experience and making underwear feel less intimidating and much more relevant to modern women.

What’s your brand’s DNA? 

Nudea launched in 2019 with a very simple belief: underwear should work for women, rather than women having to work around their underwear. Comfort is at the heart of everything we do, but it’s really about confidence, considered design, great quality and creating products that have a genuine purpose.

Sustainability has also been a no-compromise for me from the very beginning. When I started Nudea, I felt very strongly that if we were going to create a new underwear brand, we had to think differently about the materials we used and the waste we created. Underwear is a particularly wasteful category, so creating products that last, using more responsible materials and encouraging people to buy better rather than simply buy more has always been really important to us.

I don’t see sustainability as a target that you reach — it’s a journey

We’re certainly not perfect and we never will be. I don’t see sustainability as a target that you reach — it’s a journey. We’re constantly looking at new materials and ways of improving what we do. Ultimately, Nudea is about great product, comfort, fit, longevity and trying to do things better, and those principles have been there since day one.

Nudea has just celebrated seven years in business – how has the brand evolved since you launched in 2019?

The biggest evolution has probably been moving from being an underwear start-up to becoming a broader lingerie, sleepwear and lifestyle brand.

We launched with underwear very much at the centre and that remains fundamental to who we are. But we’ve learned so much from our customers over the last seven years about how they actually live and what they want from their clothes.

Sleepwear has become a really important part of that, as has the crossover between underwear, loungewear, travel and everyday dressing.

We’ve also become much more confident about what Nudea stands for. In the early days, you’re working everything out as you go. Seven years in, we have a much clearer understanding of our customer, our product and the kind of brand we want to build.

And perhaps most importantly, we’ve learned that comfort doesn’t mean compromising on style. Women want both.

What is different about working in this sector?

It’s an incredibly intimate category. You’re designing products that people wear very close to their bodies, and that means the relationship with the customer is different.

Fit is also unusually complicated. There isn’t really a standard body shape, and two people who wear the same nominal size can have completely different needs. That makes product development both challenging and incredibly rewarding.

It also means you have to listen. Some of our best ideas have come from understanding what women are struggling with and asking ourselves why something has always been done a particular way.

Sleepwear has become an increasingly important part of Nudea. Was that always part of the plan, and where do you see the category going next?

We launched sleepwear about three years into Nudea as a small capsule because we could see our customers wanting to build more of a lifestyle proposition around their underwear — pieces they could wear at home, but also pair with what they already had in their wardrobe. It was incredibly successful, and it quickly became clear that we were onto something.

I think the reason it resonated is that it isn’t really just sleepwear. We love creating investment pieces that you can wear to bed, but equally wear on the beach, travelling or out on the street. People are increasingly looking for versatility and don’t necessarily want to spend money on something that only has one purpose. That idea of ‘bed to beach’ or ‘bed to street’ has really become part of how we think about the category.

It’s also opened up exciting opportunities with retailers where a bra-fitting service isn’t necessarily available, so sleepwear has introduced Nudea to new customers and new retail environments. We’re constantly experimenting with fabrics and have recently launched new collections in Seersucker cotton and Eco Luxe, which really embody that day-to-street versatility. I think that’s where the category is going — less about traditional pyjamas and more about beautiful, versatile pieces that work across your whole lifestyle.

Nudea has recently recertified as a B Corp with an increased score. How has your approach to responsible business evolved as the brand has grown?

Being a B Corp has always been about accountability for us. It’s very easy to say you care about doing business responsibly, but the certification process forces you to look at the detail and challenge yourself on where you can do better.

We’ve increased our score from 103 to 117.6, which I’m really proud of, but I’m also conscious that the score isn’t the end point. It’s a measure of progress rather than a reason to stop.

In 2025, 58% of our production was organic cotton, and we’ve continued to develop our recycling and aftercare programmes, with a much bigger focus on product longevity. We’ve also looked at the more customer-facing elements of the business, including packaging.

As we’ve grown, the challenge has been maintaining those standards while becoming a commercially sustainable business. For me, responsible business has to be embedded in how you operate, not treated as a separate initiative.

A typical week?

There really isn’t one!

That’s one of the joys and challenges of running an independent brand. One day can be completely focused on product development and the next can be about finance, people, marketing, wholesale or strategy.

There are obviously lots of meetings, but I still try to spend as much time as possible close to the product and the customer. I think it’s very easy as a founder to become removed from those things as the business grows, and I don’t want that to happen.

Your greatest challenge?

Building an independent consumer brand in a very competitive and increasingly challenging market.

You have to be incredibly disciplined. You’re constantly balancing creativity and ambition with the commercial reality of running a business.

There’s also the challenge of staying true to your original values while evolving. You don’t want to become stagnant, but equally you don’t want to chase every trend and lose sight of what made people love the brand in the first place.

Looking back over seven years, which milestones are you most proud of – and why?

There have been lots of moments I’m proud of, but I think what means the most is seeing women genuinely connect with the product. When someone tells you they’ve finally found underwear that fits, or that they feel more comfortable and confident because of something you’ve designed, that’s incredibly rewarding. Ultimately, that’s why we started Nudea.

From a business perspective, one of my proudest moments was our crowdfund in 2022. We’ve been incredibly lucky to have some great shareholders on our cap table, but there was something particularly special about seeing our own customers invest in Nudea. We had friends, former colleagues and people from my network investing too, and seeing that level of support was incredibly touching and humbling. When your customers choose to invest in your business, it feels like the ultimate validation that they believe in what you’re building.

Seven years on, I’m also incredibly proud that we’ve built an independent brand and continued to evolve through a pretty dramatic period for retail. Our B Corp progress is another milestone I’m particularly proud of because it shows that we can grow and evolve while continuing to push ourselves to operate more responsibly. But that support from our customers is something I’ll never forget — it will stay with me throughout my career.

Worst move so far?

There have definitely been decisions I would make differently with hindsight!

I think one of the hardest lessons has been learning that not every opportunity is necessarily the right opportunity. As a young brand, there’s a tendency to want to say yes to everything because you’re excited by growth but not all opportunities pan out to be profitable or the best return on investment.

Over time, I’ve learned to be much more focused. You have to understand what is genuinely going to move the business forward and what is simply going to consume time, money and energy.

As an independent British brand, what does the Etam collaboration mean for Nudea and its ambitions internationally?

We’ve been incredibly lucky to have some great traction in the US, including recently launching with Free People and working with Nordstrom for the past couple of years. We were also selected for the Etam Accelerator programme in 2025, which was a fantastic experience. Etam were incredibly generous with their time and expertise, and we were able to work on lots of different areas of the business.

One of the most exciting outcomes was bringing to life a fuller-bust bra that we’d been working on for almost four years. It’s an exciting product for us and feels very true to Nudea’s focus on fit-led innovation.

The collaboration is also a great opportunity to start building a footprint in continental Europe, which we haven’t really had until now. For an independent British brand, that’s hugely exciting, and it allows us to take what we’ve learned about fit and innovation to a much wider international audience

Any other ambitions for Nudea going ahead? And the next seven years?

I absolutely want to see Nudea continue expanding and growing internationally. We have so much opportunity in the US, and I’m excited about exploring new markets too — the Middle East in particular feels like an area with huge potential. There’s still so much opportunity across underwear, lingerie and sleepwear, but also in how we think about Nudea as a wider lifestyle brand.

We’re also very excited about our collaboration with Tabitha Simmons in the spring. It gives us an opportunity to test a broader fashion offering for Nudea, while pushing intimates and lounge into a category you love and want to be seen in. I think that’s an exciting direction for the brand and a natural evolution of what we’ve always believed in — creating beautiful, considered pieces that can be part of your everyday wardrobe.

And on a more personal level, over the next three years I’d love to see a store with Nudea’s name above the door. We’ve built the brand predominantly online, but I think there’s something incredibly valuable about having those in-person conversations with customers, particularly as we grow. So the next chapter is about international growth, exploring new categories and continuing to challenge what Nudea can be.

Whom do you admire in the industry?

Victoria Beckham. Full stop. I think she’s built an incredible brand over 20 years and, more importantly, she’s stayed true to what she believes in. She’s always valued product and wanted to build a brand around great product, which really resonates with me.

But it’s also the entrepreneurship and stamina it takes to build a fashion, beauty or retail business. It’s taken her 20 years to get to a profitable business, and that requires grit and the ability to take a lot of knocks along the way. That’s the reality of running a retail business, and it certainly hasn’t been a smooth ride for us over the last seven years. I think she’s a great example of that kind of resilience and long-term commitment.

 

If you were not working in this industry, what would you be doing instead?

I honestly find that quite difficult to answer because fashion and product have been such a big part of my life.

I think I’d still want to be building something. I’m very curious by nature, so probably something entrepreneurial where I could create something from scratch and solve problems.

Although I might choose an industry with slightly fewer SKUs!

Time out?

I’m a big believer in getting away from the business properly when I can.

Travel is probably my favourite way to switch off. I love experiencing different places, food and cultures and I find that being somewhere completely different gives me perspective.

I also think some of your best ideas happen when you’re not actively trying to have them, so stepping away is important.

The one product you couldn’t live without?

I know this is my own brand, and of course I would say this, but I genuinely couldn’t live without my Nudea cotton basics. I wear the vest under absolutely everything, and the cotton briefs and bras are pretty much all I wear.

Whether it’s winter or summer, they’re just so comfortable. They’re made from 100% organic cotton, so they’re completely natural, easy to wash, easy to wear and they last forever. So, yes, I genuinely couldn’t live without my Nudea cotton basics!

Pet Hate?

Bad fit.

But more broadly, things that are designed without really thinking about the person who is going to use them. Whether that’s clothing, packaging, a website or an experience, I always think: has anyone actually thought about how this feels for the customer?

I think that probably comes back to why I started Nudea in the first place.

To celebrate the anniversary with its community, Nudea is launching Lucky 7: Seven Days of Giveaways, with a surprise gift included with every order placed during the seven-day birthday period.The campaign will run across Nudea’s digital, social, email and affiliate channels, alongside content looking back at the brand’s journey from 2019 to today.