A Niche of Their Own
In today’s competitive market, filling a gap in the industry is one way to make sure you stand out. Here are three Canadian companies who’ve found their spots.
By Marilyn Morley

excerpt- complete article pages 34-36, Style Magazine, March 2005

Third Floor Design: Blurring the Lines

Vancouver’s Third Floor Design has successfully elevated underwear from an afterthought to a main ingredient in the total fashion experience. Choosing soft, luxurious fabrics in forward prints and colors, Third Floor has blurred the line between outerwear and innerwear. Their unique creations blend whimsy with complete comfort in a fun and sexy way.

“Our idea was to bring lingerie to the forefront,” explains [designer and] sales and marketing manager, Tiffany Ho, who started Third Floor in 2003 with designer and production manager Brenda Li. The name was chosen, says Ho, because lingerie in many stores is located on the third floor. plus, three is a very lucky number.

“We wanted every woman to feel beautiful from the inside out,” Ho says, “because what you wear under your clothes is as much an expression of yourself as are the clothes you wear on the outside.

“The lines between commodities have drastically blurred within the last several years,” she continues. “For example, we’ve seen denim jackets over cocktail dresses, mini-dresses over denim. That’s the great thing about fashion: the combinations are endless, and anything goes.”

Both Ho and Li have the same attitude toward their selection: they won’t include anything in the line that they themselves wouldn’t love to wear. Add to this their different tastes, which include a wide selection of styles, and success seems inevitable. The two designers are a perfect match. Li is a clothing textile graduate from the University of British Columbia (UBC) who worked as a buyer with a national clothing distributor and then went to Parsons School of Design in New York. She’s nuts about textiles, historical costume and design. Ho, on the other hand, studied botany at UBC, traveled the world and was thus exposed to unique clothing and jewelry. Out of a growing interest in fashion, she decided to move back to Vancouver as a buyer for a major North American junior retailer.

Today, comfortably nestled between lingerie and outerwear, the pair work with traditional lingerie fabrics such as French lace and less conventional fabrics like burnout prints. The line offers vibrant colors like chartreuse and dusty pink, driven by delicate floral prints and accents of satin, matte jersey, French lace, velour and soft-touch lyocell. Third Floor prices start at $35 and top out at $100.

“The hand of the fabric determines if we will choose it,” says Ho. “We could absolutely love the look of a fabric, but if it feels slightly rough, we put it right back. We won’t sacrifice comfort.”

Trim is also a huge part of what goes into their designs. “We look for trim that feels good against the skin and retains its integrity,” Ho explains. “Great trim in combination with wonderful workmanship makes all the difference.” Next season watch for belt detail, beading, sequins and more rhinestones.

To make the idea work, Third Floor is also meticulous about its operation. From conception to construction, it’s all based in Vancouver. “We produce our collections locally to our demanding quality specifications in order to guarantee satisfaction to our customers, “Ho says.

Fashion Shops
By Kate MacLennan 

excerpt - complete article pages xxx-xxx, Fashion, February 2007

…where you’ll find Vancouver’s Third Floor Design lingerie. Lace is hot from this label, in both ties and trims, for spring. Candy colours and garden florals are gorgeous, especially in a split-side boxer that opens to the waist under a crisp white short robe in soft-cotton batiste.

Style Watch
Chic freaks get a Web boost
By Sarah Rowland  

excerpt- complete article in the Georgia Straight, September 28, 2006

It’s not just island-stranded designers who are eager to become part of this stylin’ cooperative, something that still stuns Ustaris. “Third Floor Design is pretty high-profile, and they were more than happy to join on,” she says. “They’re fairly well known for their simple but beautiful lingerie, and they’ve been in a lot of fashion magazines, like Loulou.

Reawakening the Brief, and Other Unmentionables
A good set of underwear can reveal who we want to be
By Julia Dault

excerpt- complete article, Walrus Magazine, July/August 2006 or online at: walrusmagazine.com/articles/2006.07-style-underwear-story/

The multi-billion-dollar underwear industry offers an overwhelming lexicon to meet our undergarment needs: lace, cotton, Lycra, microfibre, and more, stretching this way and that, in every sort of cut and cup. With underwear we want coverage but not too much, we want practicality but within reason, we want sex appeal but not rank whorishness (at least not on a regular basis). Sometimes we just want to replace the old duds with newer, pristine versions.

When coupled with underwear’s everydayness, demands like these make it an intense article of clothing. On the one hand, it is just a required piece of the social armour that is easy to ignore. Find a brand or cut you like and you’re set. And yet as a second skin, it is a heavily loaded article of clothing for men and women alike. Something that is barely there can distill intentions and raise conscious or subconscious sexual desires, foreshadowing what you do and who you want to be. It is the last physical threshold to sex. This push and pull is what some lingerie designers thrive on.

“We like to call it the total fashion experience,” says Tiffany Ho, offering a designer’s buzz for underwear’s multi-tasking. Ho, co-founder and co-director of Third Floor Design, a boutique lingerie company based in Vancouver, is well versed in the language of unmentionables. Since 2003, Ho and business partner Brenda Li have been busy making comfortable and stylish underwear for women. The company’s tag—“frivolous necessities—“is a clear statement of its intention to design undergarments where sexiness isn’t co-opted by utility, or vice versa. Their trademark soft bra and boy shorts are proof of their interdisciplinary strengths.

For Ho and Li, it’s private knowledge—the sequestering of good design beneath layers of clothing—that lends psychological power to their designs. “If you put on a good pair of underwear you feel more confident,” says Ho, adding “even though no one else might know that you have it on.” Their constant hunt for new fabrics like dry weaves and new velours, and bold, colourful patterns, means that their designs aren’t easily subsumed into the one-foot-two-foot routine of getting dressed.