lingerie briefs | may 4, 2022
forty winks x kilo brava - a strategic collaboration
My first encounter with Forty Winks located in Cambridge Massachusetts was when I visited my son during his college tenure in Boston. I hadn’t met owners Meredith Amenkhienan or Rachel Wentworth at the time, but it was immediately clear that they had a lingerie retail gold mine at their fingertips. Positioned in Harvard Square, the store embraces all the cardinal rules upon which my own career was weaned: location, location, location. They have managed, very successfully to not only create a joyful shopping environment for their customers but also to interface that experience with a very dynamic e-commerce site. The balance of brick and mortar with online shopping supported by excellent social media content, has established Forty Winks as a 2022 paradigm of retail success. I love their lingerie vision, the Middle Layer Project, in which they focus on women doing everyday things wearing their “middle layer”.
So, it’s my pleasure to introduce their newest initiative, a collaboration with the Kilo Brava brand whose own desire to foster inclusivity at a value is symbiotic with the Forty Winks attitude. Taking advantage of the artistic expertise of Kilo Brava’s owner and design director Kristin Bear, they have created a one-of-a-kind digital print that captures the classic beauty of a New England Garden. This partnership will be front and center this week as Forty Winks launches their exclusive Botanical PJ set. Constructed in a silky satin with a modicum of stretch, this shorty pajama fits sizes S-3X.
Kilo Brava X Forty Winks is not the store’s first collaboration but follows a private label strategy they began in 2021. The amazing success story of every one of these programs has set a course for the store’s future.
By Ellen Lewis Principal partner of Lingerie Briefs