Why Lane Bryant’s New Plus-Size Lingerie Ad Struck a Chord

Lane Bryant’s #ImNoAngel campaign is the stuff advertiser dreams are made of. The campaign, which features six plus-size models proclaiming their non-angel status while showing off Lane Bryant’s Caclique lingerie line, has been re-posted everywhere: Fox, CNN, Time, Buzzfeed, Today, USA Today, Refinery29, Glamour. Sofia Vergara and Zooey Deschanel have publicly endorsed it. In short, it’s gone viral.

Within the first 48 hours, #ImNoAngel clocked in 1.8 billion media impressions across TV, social, and digital platforms, according to the PR company in charge of the campaign. Digiday reports that #ImNoAngel generated over 7,000 tweets on Monday alone, and only 2% were negative. The most shared tweet so far (NFL wide receiver Chad Ochocinco’s retweet of our article) garnered over 650 retweets.

“We hoped to stimulate conversation and discussion and we hoped to stir some emotion, but we’re delighted with how this has unfolded,” Lane Bryant’s CEO Linda Heasley tells Racked. “Every day, every hour, we get really excited as more people jump in and post images and it’s just been great. We’re very, very happy.”

The #ImNoAngel verbiage—a pretty direct jab at Victoria’s Secret’s top models—only helped feed the campaign’s viral fuel. Adweek called it an attack ad, the Washington Post said it could be bullying skinny models, and Popsugar wondered if it really was “redefining sexy.” Everyone was talking about it, which was the goal in the first place.

“The #ImNoAngel mantra questions what ‘angel’ really means,” Heasley says. “The notion of angel as the personification of perfection isn’t achievable or attainable for most women. Women are barraged daily by images of beauty that most of us give up on. So, we wanted to show who you can be and not focus on what you’re not but focus on who you are and what you can be. It was a fun, tongue-in-cheek way of stimulating discussion.”

Justine Legault, one of the models featured in the #ImNoAngel images, was confident going in that the campaign would have its supporters, but described the response as overwhelming. “There’s this feeling of ‘Oh great, finally,’” Legault tells Racked. “You always know that you want these things to happen and then when it happens, you’re like, ‘This is great.’ And you just try to live the moment. You try to be in the moment because you want to cherish everything.”

“We got a little bit of pushback but people came around.”

Ashley Graham, another of the campaign’s stars, is no stranger to media storms. She made headlines as the first plus-size model in the ad pages of Sports Illustrated‘s 2015 swimsuit edition earlier this year, and was the subject of an ad controversy back in 2010 when she filmed a lingerie spot for Lane Bryant that ABC initially refused to air. This time around, it was easier to get the campaign off the ground.

“We got a little bit of pushback but people came around,” Heasley says. “It’s time to change. It’s time for us to make a statement. There’s been so much in the press recently about body imagery and body shaming. It’s gotta stop. This campaign builds on that tradition of stirring the pot but it’s a different time, although it’s not so different. That’s what’s so interesting.”

Based on her experience, Graham wasn’t surprised by the overwhelming support. “Right now, I really feel like anything anybody does in the curvy, plus-size—whatever you want to call it—fashion world, I think that it gets a lot of buzz because this is what people want to talk about right now,” Graham tells Racked. “They want to talk about being curvy and being sexy and not being afraid to show what society has called flaws. I think that’s fantastic because more young girls need to have role models like that.”

Graham is well-known for her work in promoting body acceptance, both as the founding member of ALDA, a coalition of models working with young women to promote healthy body images, and as the founder of her own plus-size lingerie line. She sees the Lane Bryant campaign as another step towards plus-size models becoming a regular part of the fashion industry. “This is definitely a catalyst and I’m using my body in a great way to spread a message of love and acceptance,” Graham says. “But I really believe that very soon—I hope—we won’t have to say, ‘Oh, this happened in the plus-size world!’ It’ll be about the fashion.”

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Retooled startup offers personalized lingerie

There’s nothing like a good fit.

That’s the idea behind Peach, a Waltham startup that sells what it calls better-fitting lingerie. The company has been keeping a low profile, even after raising more than $3 million in venture capital. But it’s quietly assembling a network of commissioned sales agents around the country — the company calls them stylists — to help market bras, underwear, and hosiery.

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How do you get a better fit? Peach’s stylists will do measurements in their own homes or those of their customers, chief executive Janet Kraus said.

Peach isn’t exactly a new company; it’s a reinvention of a 2004-vintage startup called Zyrra, which sold $98 bras that were custom crafted, based on a woman’s measurements. Zyrra won $50,000 in the very first MassChallenge startup competition in 2010 and raised roughly $1 million from individual investors.

Kraus was an entrepreneur in residence at Harvard Business School who had a seat on Zyrra’s board. “I watched and helped as certain things were really working, and others weren’t working as well,” she said. One big issue: Customers didn’t like waiting six to 10 weeks for their custom-made bras.

In 2013, Kraus signed on as CEO, with Zyrra cofounder Derek Ohly staying as chief operating officer. They developed the Peach brand, expanded its product offerings to things like tank tops and sleepwear, and stopped producing made-to-order bras.

Peach stylists still visit the homes of customers or hold office hours in their own homes to take measurements. Then, Kraus said, when customers reorder products from the website, they can access their stored sizes.

The company’s target market, Kraus said, are women over 30 who “look at Victoria’s Secret and say, ‘It’s awesome that Heidi Klum is 41 and looks like that, but who really does?’  ” She said many moms “put shopping for this category of clothing below getting a root canal.”

Kraus said the company has been recruiting stylists around the country and now has about 100 in 20 states.

Peach has also begun holding promotional events in cities where clusters of its stylists work. They take place in hotels or country clubs and offer fittings for Peach products, along with manicures and massages. Kraus said the company may do its first event in Boston next month, or in June.

Peach has 12 full-time employees. Its investors include Boston-based NextView Ventures and FKA, a Cambridge firm that previously was the tech arm of Atlas Venture.

Scott Kirsner can be reached
at kirsner@pobox.com. Follow him
on Twitter @ScottKirsner and on betaboston.com.

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