layla l'obatti Archives - Between The Sheets Blog

Top Tip or Advice – Meet the Maker Day 23

03.23.2019 by btslingerie // Leave a Comment

My advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is to practice discernment- the ability to know when it’s you vs something else is a skill that is a constant work in progress.

Knowing when you’re in the wrong, knowing when you can improve, knowing when you can step up are all important but if you go into business for yourself there is a high likelihood you already hold yourself to high expectations, so it’s just as important to know when something is out of your control, when someone is asking you to take on too much or expecting too much, knowing when to let go. These things are never easy, one experience does not translate to the next and learning to be ok with that and dealing with each step of your life in business is the only advice I can give.

A huge example of this is when you hear other people’s stories of success – like “you have the same number of hours in the day as xyz person” they have a different body, a different lived experience, a different support structure, were born at a different time, work in a different industry… do you get my point? There is no one way to succeed and no path through the woods, you have to discover that for yourself and your discernment will light the way.

To see the original post on instagram – click here

We’re collecting all of my March Meet the Maker posts here on the blog for ease of reading and all of you who might not be on instagram or facebook. It was a great opportunity to share a bit more about our brand and hope it helps you get to know me and BTS a little better!

Becoming a B Corporation – What It Means & Why It Matters

11.22.2016 by btslingerie // 1 Comment

B Corporation – What It Means

We have some big news to share, after many months of hard work behind the scenes we are proud to announce that Between the Sheets is now a Certified B Corporation ®. Certified B Corps meet higher standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. In the apparel industry this is a huge task, given that apparel manufacturing is the second most polluting industry in the world second only to oil.

We have always made the 3 pillars of sustainability (environmental, economic, and social) a part of our brand, our certification as a B Corp deepens and formalizes this commitment. Transparency and sharing the thought process behind our collections has always been important to us, so things that were too big or too broad to cover in our sustainability statement we have shared on our blog – and some of those ideas have been picked up and carried far and wide across the web like our blog post fast fashion vs. fast food. In the coming months we will share more on the blog on our process of becoming a B Corp and the evolution of our business. In the mean time you can read more about what it means to us to be a B Corporation on our website or our profile & mission statement on B corp.

B Corporation – Why It Matters

As customers we know that ethical and sustainable choices are tough to make, especially when times are tight. As a designer I know that what draws me to brands and collections are designs, functionality, price, so we’ve never really led with our sustainability but let it be the icing on the cake. Opting for you to discover the values that drive us and made in the USA commitment on the care label, or info card we include along with your orders, or perhaps in a hashtag on social media. As the years have gone by, we have noticed a new wave of brands who have adopted the same marketing, and we realized it was becoming increasingly difficult for consumers to tell the difference between brands that really cared and brands that just copied and pasted their ethos from others. It’s easy to re-write something about sustainability and environmental issues giving it a “green wash”, but it’s another thing to be at the forefront and grappling with the balance between wearability, durability, design, and ethical environmental manufacturing.

One of the things that appealed to us about becoming a B Corporation was that you are assessed on a broad number of social, community, environmental, and other criteria. This includes the PERCENTAGE of sales coming from products or services that support or incorporate these important values. One of the things I have noticed is brands who write a really compelling PR pitch but who don’t follow that up with any hard data. Using one green collection or practice to basically greenwash their company and enjoy all the feel good sales that come with it. Not all of our collections are as environmentally friendly as others, but for sure all of them are made ethically and in NYC where environmental energy standards, and labor standards are both stringent & strictly enforced. A brand that claims to be using eco-friendly fabrics but producing in a country with little to no environmental standards for manufacturing could be using machines powered by coal-burning plants and dumping excess dyes in rivers – practices that we are still trying to recover from here in NYC (my husband would know he spent 6 years advocating for a cleaner Hudson River for the environmental NGO Riverkeeper).

We know it’s hard enough to shop for products that look good, feel good, wash easily, fit properly, and fit your taste for color and design – so the last thing you want to worry about is how a product is made and its’ impact on the environment, so our goal with becoming a B Corp was to make sure our customers know we are actually walking the walk and not just talking the talk.

There are certifications for fair trade, but they don’t include places that already have higher wage standards like the USA and Europe, and they certainly don’t track environmental standards or concerns of producing in the countries they cover. There are environmental certifications of factories, of fabrics, but they don’t quite cover the many things that go into the operating of a brand & making of a product. With B Corporation we’re committing to tracking IT ALL – how much water we use at our office (it’s a shared studio so that’s kinda hard), what percentage of energy we use is from renewable sources, what our waste is in production, what percentage of items we SELL are organic, chemical free, and much more (the qualification of SALES is important, it keeps us honest because collections designed for PR do not count!).

Small businesses are naturally lean, but not naturally green – if you are taking care in how you spend your dollars with ethically made brands, imagine our decisions – with everything from boxes, to mailers, to paper we must consider each choice and are always hunting for better and more sustainable ways to make, store, and ship product, all on top of the already huge task of designing and marketing it.

Making undergarments in a sustainable way means always looking for the next innovation in design or materials. We can’t go back to the dark ages of rigid fabrics and materials without spandex, these just don’t function for modern undergarments. New developments in textiles are coming out every day and we are always looking to move ever closer to our goals of being a greener company. At the same time not all of them apply to intimate apparel and sleepwear (I don’t think most of our fans are gonna be into vegan fruit leather underwear) and sometimes if a material is so new its durability may be untested and it can be prohibitively expensive and won’t price out once we add our Made in NYC labor costs. Again, those are the concerns that we weigh, and that you won’t have to think about when you buy from us. You can keep coming back knowing that each year our goal is to be an improving version of ourselves – because sustainability is not a destination it is a journey, tomorrow we will be better and we hope you will continue to show your support for our brand and share in that journey.

We’d love to hear from you in the comments: if you have questions about B corporations or a specific ethical or environmental issue we’ll try to answer them here where other fans and customers can see our responses. We’re committed to remaining transparent and that means if you have questions or want to know why we made something a certain way, just ask us!

behind the scenes – Andromeda photoshoot in Iceland with Arden Leigh

11.16.2016 by btslingerie // Leave a Comment

Behind the Scenes – Andromeda Shoot in Iceland with Arden Leigh

I had begun to work on the sourcing and putting together my ideas for Andromeda shortly after releasing Arabesque. The Specimens of Seduction collections are all sort of connected in my head, showing the evolution of a woman’s love life – from blossoming and new love, to the uncertainty of reciprocated affection & unrequited love, and with this collection I wanted to explore the idea of what happens when our ideals of love shatter, when it leaves us broken and we put the pieces back together and something even more beautiful and strong emerges. To me it began with of all the most unlikely places, a trip to the hardware store that inspired me to use copper and brass elements. This represented going back to our essential nature as metal smithing was the building block for modern society, and metal in unexpected pairings also reminded me of Kintsugi the Japanese art of fixing pottery with metal. Because you rarely see metal forms incorporated into lingerie other than rings and slides.To me the metals in terms of garment construction could also be seen as a metaphor for bondage or armor (the romantic ideals that hold us back & the romantic ideals that protect us). This wide inspiration might all come across as esoteric, but to me its the story of the many rabbit holes I dive down that help me to create something with personal. That personal inspiration may remain unseen in the actual garments and photos, but I like to think that it can perhaps be felt in the same way a piece of art or music touches something deeper.

So from there as I started designing I was exploring the story of Andromeda, a woman sacrificed (bound & chained, see where that metal element comes in?) for being perceived as so beautiful it was threatening… and then Arden and I talked about shooting this in Iceland, and it wasn’t until I started scouting locations and found the cliffs at Vik that I connected the images of Andromeda I had seen in paintings and online with Iceland and I realized what a wonderful coincidence it was for us to have chosen to shoot there, see my inspiration on pinterest alongside images from shoot click here.

Anyways, I will conclude my waxing poetic about design inspiration and the magical moments where coincidence feels like kismet. Behind the scenes and link to the full lookbook below!

Blue Lagoon

We only shot one look at Blue lagoon, and mostly bc its a private spa and we didn’t really want to interfere with the other guests or have a full on photoshoot there without the spa’s go ahead. We arrived early and shot this look first thing before it got too crowded, it started raining during this shot and with the sun from behind and fog that started to rise from the lagoon. When we pulled together the final edit we chose a headshot we took of Arden submerged in the lagoon but left these out bc the man made feel of the bridges didn’t fit with the rest of the Arden vs. the Landscape theme emerging from the rest of the shoot. I will be doing another blog post with the shots that didn’t make the lookbook, including these from Blue lagoon, so stay tuned for that!

Vik – Reynisfjara & Reynisdrangar

When you arrive at Vik it almost feels like you have arrived at the end of the earth, well other than the tour buses. There are no towns, no houses, and very few people. The landscape is huge, look at the scale of Arden against these rock cliffs and then the wide shots in our lookbook & below with the rock cliffs. For the wide shots we were far away and there were tourists in the background of the shot that had to be photoshopped out, they looked like little ants along the foot of these giant rock walls!

Click here for the image/painting of Andromeda mythology that these Reynisdrangar cliffs reminded me of.

In between shots we warmed up in the car, wrapped Arden in a jacket, boots, and those heat reflecting blankets so she could walk out to the spot we were posing. I started leaving my coat in the car so that I’d be able to get a feeling for how cold she was, bc if I was wearing more than her and getting cold it was time for her to go in. Make no mistake it was windy, the cold air was hitting her skin directly through those sheer fabrics so imagine that pins and needles feeling and you’ll get just an idea of how that felt.

In certain shots and lighting you can see her goosebumps on closeups, and still she was able to hit some beautiful poses and capture a serenity that is truly remarkable considering the conditions. We got lucky with a few sun breaks but at temps around 40-45 degrees farenheit (4-7 degrees celsius) that does very little in the way of warming up the body.

Can you see the little white specs in the background to the left of Arden above? Those are tourists at the cliffs!

A jetlagged, freezing, and yet smiling Arden warming up between shots.

Things you don’t see in the final shots, the pile of shoes, warming blankets, and jacket that she threw off right before this to Josh’s right.

A quick trip to the cafe after shooting before we started driving back to Reykjavik.

Golden Circle – between Gulfoss and Geysir

one of the few places where we saw houses outside of Rejkjavik, I’m assuming farms bc of the horses and livestock (the sheep were a bit skittish so no photos of them, sorry!)

This Icelandic pony was the friendliest, we have some of Josh’s photos of this and will release them in a separate post with photos that didn’t make the cut of the lookbook – but this was a really magical moment and Arden seemed to forget how cold it was and hung out with this guy until he left us to graze.

Golden Circle – Pingvellir

The things you don’t see in the final shot – her boots and a jacket underneath her to shield from the cold mossy rocks.

This last day shooting was a little bit warmer, but not enough to make it comfortable but it did allow us to shoot for longer periods outside the car and I think that shows up in the range and quality of shots. It was also easier in that we didn’t shoot anywhere near onlookers or tourists but found places to pull off the road and that lent itself to easier and quicker shooting.

Hope you’ve enjoyed the peek behind the scenes and if you’re starving for more, check out the links below.

Traveling to Iceland? Check out our Iceland travel tips post click here.

The Andromeda Lookbook is now live – click here (some images may be NSFW)

Andromeda was a collection that I designed with no intent to mass produce, many of these pieces would not be able to be made in the commercial production facilities we use as there is too much hand detailing, and to be honest when I am designing commercially things like hanger appeal, storage, laundering, and closures all become part of the design process. For me this was an excercise in exploring the beauty that I could make when released from the shackles of those commercial necessities. So with all of that in mind I hope you’ll understand why we won’t have product pages for any of the items here, I may release a small cut of them that is made in house in the future, but for now they will be made to order/bespoke and you can contact info at btslingerie.com for prices and product information.

model: Arden Leigh

photographer: Josh Verleun

design, styling, hair: Layla L’obatti