Our Story

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I don’t have the classic sewing story. I didn’t grow up making clothes for my Barbie dolls, I wasn’t taught to sew at five years old by my grandmother, and I didn’t venture into bra making because I couldn’t find one that fit. The first time I ever touched a sewing machine was in high school when I enrolled in a fashion design class in grade 10.

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. 

But something clicked. Before long I was spending every lunch hour in the sewing room, staying after school to keep working, and heading home only when I realized it was already late into the night. At one point, students from our culinary program would bring over food they were preparing for the cafeteria just to make sure I remembered to eat.

What started as a class quickly turned into an obsession. I was fascinated by how a flat piece of fabric could become a three-dimensional garment through pattern and construction. I signed up for fashion every semester after that and even took a lap year dedicated entirely to building my fashion portfolio for university applications. During that time I became an honour student, received scholarships for my grades, and was awarded the Amanda Owen Fashion Scholarship.

I later went on to study Fashion Design at Ryerson University, where I completed the four-year program and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Fashion Design. While at university, that curiosity only grew. For my fourth year thesis collection, I decided to design a line of lingerie. At the time my schedule was already packed with commuting to Toronto, working, internships, and an intense academic program, so I thought lingerie might actually be one of the easier directions to take.

It wasn’t.

The lingerie ended up being more technically challenging than the wedding dress I had made, the tailored menswear, the leather jacket, or even the faux fur purse I had constructed during my program. Bras are far more technical than they appear. Fabric stretch, elastic tension, and the structural distribution of breast volume all influence fit and support.

The deeper I got into it, the more I realized how much there was to learn.

What started as a university project turned into a deep specialization in bra making. Years of drafting, testing, sewing, and studying the structure of lingerie transformed that early curiosity into expertise. The Lingerie Formula grew out of that journey and now serves as a place where makers around the world can learn the craft engineering, and artistry behind bra making.

— Siena Calarco
Founder, The Lingerie Formula