If the models in underwear ads make you feel your body is not suited to wear them, then switch your focus and see the body positive models in Tailor & Circus, the unisex underwear brand. Their Instagram page tells a story of a unique organic growth. Even before one goes to read the details of the products, it is the picture of the models that lure many to click on the ‘shop now’ option.
In their posts, shoppers’ comments are mostly about the models and the confidence with which they flaunt their bodies. There is no hiding the cellulite, the stretch marks and the curves.
The same goes for the male models. “We wanted to create an equal underwear experience for all genders — across a range of cuts from bikinis to boxer shorts. Underwear, we felt, was the important garment on your skin and easily the most undervalued and overlooked,” says Abishek, one of the founders of Tailor & Circus.
Founders Vasanth Sampath, Gaurav Durasamy and Abishek Elango say their products are all about supporting body positivity.
Introducing his team, Abishek Elango says, “While I’m an assistant director in the film industry, Vasanth has about 20 years of underwear expertise from his factory in Tirupur and Gaurav Durasamy is a clean tech engineer with a focus on sustainability and green energy. Our experience, as you can see, is varied and we handle Marketing and Creatives, manufacturing and research, operations and management respectively. We have engaged the expertise of women designers and fabric specialists for our products overall, more specifically for women as we expanded this category,” says Abishek.
To make things better, the brand uses azo-free and skin safe dyes and we also do an anti-microbial process that prevents fungal and bacterial growth on you underwear — a condition we found widely prevalent and causing a host of preventable primary sexual health conditions including jock itch.
The brand’s vision is ‘creating a body positive community around underwear and vision to design real clothing for real shapes, ethically and sustainably’. “We created Tailor & Circus (TxC) after seeing significant gaps in both men’s and women’s underwear when it came to a compromise between comfort and performance. We felt overt and hyper sexualisation had led to a significant drop in the comfort levels enjoyed by women and gender bias and hyper masculinity had led to shortage of interesting options for men and a massive loss of softness as well. We arrived at beechwood modal after a lot of research,” adds Abishek.
Abishek claims the material used — MicroModal — is developed onsite and sustainably cultivated in Austrian forests. The material is extracted from natural beechwood pulp, is thrice as soft as cotton and significantly more breathable in tropical weather. “We source the highest grade yarn that is spun exclusively at Lenzing authorised mills to ensure only the finest fabric becomes Tailor & Circus underwear,” he adds.
Talking about their realistic models, the founders says “We use people from our own Instagram community as representatives and we don't airbrush or hide scars, stretch marks, cellulite or shapes in anyway. Women have responded really well and fully endorsed our ideology — men have had a little bit of a learning curve even though, or especially because, male body positivity is somehow less understood and discussed. We are actively working towards creating a safe space for both conversations and we give full ownership over all our photos to the models themselves where we get prior approval before each post.”
