Zachary Gray
Sophie Simmons’ namesake lingerie collection includes rompers, slips, camisoles, undies, bralettes and more. The high-end delicates are made from 100 percent Japanese ribbed cotton with French embroidery.
Born to an American father and a French mother, Simmons was raised in both Paris and New York City. She grew up wearing dessous, French underpieces for layering, which she inherited from her grandmother.
“I think that maybe my aesthetic came from growing up in France,” Simmons says. “And my entrepreneurial spirit came from living in a place like New York.”
Simmons spent almost 20 years in New York. She attended Parsons School of Design and launched two brands: Thread Bridesmaid, a bridal line, and later Dessous, a lingerie collection.
Hedi Ross
Sophie Simmons
“One of my best friends was an editor for Vogue,” Simmons says. “We were at that time where everybody was getting married, and she was a very fashionable girl, clearly.”
Simmons was asked to design a bridesmaid dress for her friend’s sister’s wedding.
“It was one of those really high-end, fashion-centric weddings,” she says. “Immediately after, dress requests began pouring in. Then my future business partner, who was also my best friend, called me and said, ‘We have a business.’”
The pair created a small collection, took pictures, and bought ad space in Martha Stewart Weddings. The next day, they received around 100 phone calls.
Eventually, Simmons grew tired of making bridesmaid dresses.
“I really wanted to make something that was more personal to me,” she says. “And the lingerie brand is very personal. It’s very much sort of the way I dress.”
After extensive research, Simmons realized she had wrongly gauged the value of the traditional, Swiss-made dessous she inherited. The pieces she’d been wearing for years were $600 to $800.
Zachary Gray
“The first part of my research was figuring out how much things cost,” Simmons says. “I don't finish my pieces with quite the same technology, simply because it doesn’t exist in the United States—but I’ve come very close.”
Direct brand-to-customer interaction made it possible for her to offer the pieces at a lower price point.
Simmons prefers using embroidery, instead of lace, on her underpinnings.
“I think the look of lace can be very sort of old-fashioned, in a way that's not positive,” she says. “There’s these little towns in France that still have these old mills. And in the one that I found, it’s the only place where they still make 100% cotton embroideries. Those are the most expensive part of my products, the embroidery that is then fed into the cotton.”
Simmons relocated to Nashville in 2009. In 2012, she put the Dessous brand on hold for three years and then relaunched under her own name, selling exclusively through e-commerce. Simmons’ intimates line is currently manufactured in New York, though she plans to move production to Florence, Alabama, where she’ll partner with Natalie Chanin of the heralded Alabama Chanin brand.
“One of the big things as a designer is to be able to oversee your production and see how your product is being made, and have a handle on it,” Simmons says. “Moving it to a place like Florence, Alabama, would make that possible for me.”