Ms A
Report by Pippa Brooks
Photography by James Lightbown
The most surprising thing about Ms A London, a new lingerie and swimwear brand launching next year, is that it doesn’t already exist! Ms A is being designed and developed by Winn Austin and Bok Goodall for transgender women. What sets them apart is that along with designing the stunning garments, they are also developing the first ever sizing standard for the transgender community.
The visibility of transgender women globally in fashion campaigns and on runways is at an all time high. Despite an increasing number of brands dedicated to the gender fluid body, and a cultural shift in attitudes to gender diversity, this visibility comes with a constant fight for rights and understanding. One seemingly small yet fundamental lack in the current lingerie market is that there is no size standard in existence for the trans female body. Despite a perceived inclusivity, this customer has historically been ignored. Underwear is the foundation for everything we wear, the lack of choice or even a basic offer is a huge absence which Ms A London are addressing and intend to solve.
The photographs of Winn, looking glorious in a selection of Ms A samples, started to appear in my Instagram feed during lockdown. As always, the seemingly ageless model, showgirl, club host and stylist looks glamorous and sleek in a variety of gorgeous lingerie sets and one-pieces. All the images are so joyful, and communicate the infectious excitement these women have for their groundbreaking brand. I was dying to ask them how it had come about…
I zoomed with Bok and Winn from their hotel room in glamorous Harrogate before a BBC TV interview the following morning. Having been friends for years, the two often talked about developing something together for the community, and last year decided that if it didn’t exist, they would have to create it.
Pippa: You both bring a wealth of relevant experience to Ms A; you’ve worked in lingerie for a long time, haven’t you Bok?
Bok Goodall: Yeah, about 20 years.
And Winn, you bring the perspective of your personal experience, of course, but also being a model, performer and stylist for many years, you must have had to create your own solutions to the lack of choice out there?
Winn Austin: You’ve seen my shows at Kinky Gerlinky, wearing just barely nothing, giving the illusion… was my personal thing. Basically I’ve incorporated some of that into the technology of this brand.
Your stage outfits were always very bodycon….
I’ll tell you one of my secrets: most of my style was off the shoulder dresses and I used to use elastic basically to just cup myself underneath, to give that shape at the top. I never wore corsetry, except as outerwear. I found ways to give my body an illusion in my clothes, it was inspired by how they made clothes back in the 30s and 40s. I remember I was doing a TV show called The Vampire, Anthony Price was making my costume for that, he was measuring me and I got a sense of how he constructed clothes for women. When you’ve been in the hands of a genius like that, you learn. And my grandmother was a seamstress, so I learned how to cut cloth, sew hems and put buttons on at a very early age. Learning how to deal with fashion as opposed to just dressmaking back in the day was just a simple step for me.
And didn’t designer Jeffrey Bryant work with you on a lot of your costumes?
Back in the Kinky days, Jeffrey made my clothes, but under my instructions. I picked the fabric and he made the clothes that I wanted him to do. Later as we got comfortable with each other, we collaborated on some of the stuff that he had the idea to make.
Although you created some gorgeous prototypes based on Winn as the sample size, when did you realise the importance of creating the standard transgender size model for the industry as a whole?
Bok: If I’m working on lingerie with someone and they want to see a sample, obviously I would get it made in a particular size and of course whoever was making the sample would know how to make that size. When we came to be doing what we’re doing, we were like, oh ok, so there’s nothing, there’s no size. So when lockdown happened we thought, well, we can’t do anything because there’s no sample sizes, we can’t fit anything, we started to talk about the whole project and that we should expand on this and work on the sizing.
What you are doing is really important for the industry, not just your own brand. How has the industry helped you in your mission?
We’ve had conversations with the BSI [British Standards Institute]; they confirmed that there is no sizing for this customer and they’re going to help us create the standard. We’ll have to create it but they’ll help to make it an official standard globally. Winn is model size, so in a way, she can be more creative with what’s already out there, and make that work. There are going to be a lot of customers for us that aren’t model size, that can’t make anything out there work. We’re also trying to make something that’s comfortable, so you’re putting on one garment underneath rather than four different things to do different jobs. Construction of the garments has been developed to consider body shape, ultimate comfort and to create a little magic in terms of swerves and curves! All styles are created to nip and tuck and accentuate where necessary.
Once there’s a size standard, it will be something people can buy online. It’s such early days isn’t it? Of course you can quote measurements but it must be quite daunting being the first to attempt this?
That’s why we’re doing all this research and development into it and trying to raise funds to be able to do that. We’ve applied for funding through grants.
And - something that I find hard to fathom - you’ve set up a GoFundMe page. I would have thought that big lingerie brands would be clamouring to invest what you are doing!
We’ve had one big American brand that’s interested that we’re talking to and then we’re also speaking with a big manufacturer next week, Because, obviously if you were to put funding behind it as a brand, you’d be the first brand to use it which could be huge. Everyone we speak to is so interested in it…
And yet…what?
Winn: Well you know Pippa, I‘m a little bit like you; I say this: it’s like how a lot of people wave the rainbow flag between the beginning of June and the end of July and then it’s done. They’ll have the rainbow flag up on their establishment but all the stuff that goes along with it….it’s Black History Month all over again!
I imagine you’ll get to a point and then people will be fighting to get involved…maybe they’re all waiting for someone else to jump. Someone big. But the great thing about you two is that you’re going to do it anyway.
We started out and you know the force of my character; at no point in the course of all this process have I accepted anybody’s “No’s”! This was a long time coming for us. It wasn’t just an idea we cooked up quickly, I’ve known Bok for many years and we’ve talked about it for years in some shape or form. At first it was going to be flesh coloured underwear for women of colour. Because for a long time it was just basic black . When I was first asked to host Kinky Gerlinky I remember clearly I wanted to do a nude illusion look because I had these big yellow feathers…
I remember that look!
…I wanted nude bra and nude pants covered in rhinestones but everywhere I searched it didn’t exist, it’s funny because when I was a child in Guyana you could get my colour nude. I remember once my Mum buying a set of underwear there. To me it was quite shocking that I couldn’t get it here. And backstage at fashion shows, they had the nude Tangas for the white girls but nothing nude for the black models. I did Sadie Clayton’s fashion show around 2014/15 and I was the only person of colour in that show that had nude underwear in my colour. I’ll tell you how I got it: I went to New York city to Harlem – one of those beat up, old fashioned, old women stores and they had pantie girdles in my colour. This was some ancient stock that you could never get again. Everyone was gagging at the show and saying: “How come you’ve got nude underwear!?” Because I was wearing a see-through copper skirt and the girls who were wearing white stuff that needed nude underneath, one of the girls was asked if she’d wear nothing underneath, and she said no she didn’t want to walk around with everything on display!
So you will be offering Ms A in a diverse selection of nudes, along the lines of Skims?
Winn: The difference between that and our brand is that ours can be underwear or outerwear. I mean I’m sure you can wear hers outside but ours, I can imagine say with the chocolate brown pieces, you could just wear it with a big net skirt and that’s your outfit for the night. You can wear it underneath stuff and when I wear it underneath, it makes my body look incredible.
Bok: The first fitting we did, Winn came out and she put this little skimpy vest on over the top and we were just screaming, it just worked so well underneath!
Winn: And you know I’ve got me some booty but I don’t having nothing that looks like that!
(Winn has managed to find the photo on her phone and is holding it up to the screen and she does look amazing!!!)
You must be so excited for when you can safely do fittings and try the samples on other people!
Winn: It’s been a blessing in my opinion to have this lockdown. Because we had a pause for perfection. It was a nice slow steady pace.
Bok: Tomorrow we’re doing a fitting and then we will make any amendments, order some new samples and then as soon as we can safely, we’ll hold focus groups, and take measurements and fittings at those groups. Then we’ll turn that information into sizing. We’ll probably end up with six women that we try everything on.
Winn: I’m so excited to see what they look like on somebody else!
It’s credit to your friendship and determination that you have got this far and will see it through to create the first transgender size standard in history!
Winn: I try to implement change by doing something. Everyone has a platform, I don’t want to tell people what to think or do, I want to lead by example.
Bok: It’s so easy to talk about doing something but to stand up and be counted and actually do something about it, there’s not many people actually do that.
Anything else you want to say about Ms A London?
Winn: This is primarily geared to the transwomen community, the non-binaries, the cross-dressers but it’s not exclusively for them. I have a girlfriend who’s a burlesque dancer and she loves the bras that we do because there’s no wire in them. She’s not well endowed and her body might look slightly masculine even though she’s a girl, so she likes the stuff that I wear as opposed to the stuff that’s out there. We don’t want to be guilty of doing the same things as everybody else, It’s inclusive, NOT exclusive. But of course there are things that we are doing to the fitting that are different than a cis gendered women’s size. But anyone who identifies as female can wear this. I swear to god, when I was coming up, I wish there was somebody doing what we’re doing. It would have made my life a whole life simpler! [Laughing]