BRAND DEEP DIVE — KAT THE LABEL
In April 2023, Kate Nixon was on her honeymoon in Thailand when she opened an email titled "KYLIE." Inside was a link to Kylie Jenner's Coachella post, wearing Kat The Label's Frankie Underwire in white. Nixon had gifted the piece months earlier and hadn't heard anything back since.
By that point she'd been running the label for eight years.
Nixon started sewing at 15, altering her own clothes on a toy sewing machine because nothing off the rack fit her properly, then teaching herself to make things from scratch.
She enrolled at RMIT to study journalism, switched into fashion design and technology once she realised where her actual interest was, and during a university project researching the lingerie industry became fixated on 1920s bralettes. She noticed most of what was currently on the market was built around padding and structure. Designed, as she's put it, for "the male gaze rather than for women wanting to wear beautiful underwear."
Out of university and a little unsure what to do next, she was tinkering on her sewing machine one day and made a small lace bralette. She called it the Serendipity. It's still the label's best selling style.
She kept making them in her bedroom, first in Byron Bay and then Melbourne, and posting them on Instagram mostly to show friends. People she'd never met started asking to buy them. That was 2015, and there was no plan behind it beyond that. Nixon has cited Sophia Amoruso's Girlboss as an early touchstone during that stretch less for the business advice than for the reassurance that someone who'd built something real out of nothing had also, by her own account, eaten instant noodles for a week and had no idea what she was doing half the time.
It took four and a half years before the business felt stable enough to grow with any confidence. Nixon has said she tested new styles slowly, only committing real money to a piece once she had evidence people actually wanted it, rather than expanding on debt a habit that meant Kat The Label grew almost entirely on its own revenue rather than outside investment.
The pieces themselves stayed built around soft construction and minimal boning rather than padding. Nixon has said she can't imagine spending $300 on a bra, and the label's pricing sits between fast fashion lingerie and the higher end of the category.
Wholesale came in stages. Revolve picked the label up as a US stockist a few years into the business, and Shopbop, Free People and Urban Outfitters followed as the audience grew. David Jones placed its first order for Valentine's Day 2023, with stock landing in stores the following January. Somewhere in that period, Kate Nixon spoke to Airwallex about the specific mechanics of running an Australian brand selling in US dollars currency conversion, holding foreign revenue, the kind of operational detail that doesn't show up in a highlight reel but is part of what actually lets a small label sell internationally without losing margin to exchange rates.
After the Coachella post, Charli D'Amelio wore the brand too, and Nixon collaborated with Swedish influencer Hanna Schönberg on a capsule. A flagship store opened on High Street in Armadale, Melbourne, after a run of pop ups in Melbourne and Sydney where customers tried pieces on and gave feedback directly to the team feedback the brand used before committing to a permanent location. Anna Metcalfe joined as a formal business partner and now runs marketing and growth. The label operates today as a fully female led team, and has expanded its e commerce to the US, UK and Europe under separate regional sites.
The brand also states a formal position on ethical manufacturing, saying it holds its factories and workers to defined trading and working condition standards a claim that's easier to state than verify from the outside, but one Nixon has repeated consistently across interviews rather than treating as a one off marketing line.
This year, the Marilyn Monroe estate approached Kat The Label to mark what would have been Monroe's hundredth birthday. "We were so honoured to be approached by Marilyn Monroe's estate to bring this collaboration to life," Nixon said. "Marilyn embodied a kind of confidence and femininity that is completely timeless." The resulting twelve piece capsule corsetry, sheer tulle robes, polka dot pieces, was shot on model Emily Venz, and sits alongside a small run of other centenary licenses the estate approved that year, including a Montblanc pen.
2025 was the label's ten year anniversary. In an interview with DSCENE Magazine, Nixon reflected on what it's meant to build a brand in an industry she describes as historically dominated by male led lingerie giants. "I do have to laugh sometimes when I think about how many men have traditionally run lingerie companies," she said. "I think that contrast is part of why our brand stood out from the beginning." She talked about second guessing her own instincts early on, thinking she needed to adopt a more traditionally "masculine" approach to be taken seriously, before deciding that leaning into her own way of thinking and building a team around the same values was what actually worked.
The label also runs an annual fundraiser for the National Breast Cancer Foundation, its most recent raising just under $24,000 in a single October, and supports Endometriosis Australia. It's one of the paid placement partners on The Encoreship, the industry program now run by Dissh, alongside brands like Adore Beauty and Saint Valentine that places women returning to work after a career break into paid roles at fashion and retail businesses.
With love (and frankness),
Bea x
Comments