Photo: JC Olivera/Getty Images for Amazon Studios
Lizzo is officially getting into the fashion game — more specifically, the shapewear game.
On Wednesday, the performer announced Yitty, a shapewear and undergarment brand rooted in body positivity and size inclusivity that's been in the works for three years. It's launching in partnership with Fabletics, Inc., the parent company of Kate Hudson's Fabletics, according to The New York Times. (Previously known as TechStyle Fashion Group, it also helped start Savage X Fenty.)
The idea began to take form after Lizzo had a negative experience shopping for shapewear in a store, and was left disillusioned by the lack of options, she told the Times' Vanessa Friedman. That pushed her to start taking meetings with potential brand partners to start her own thing, but no one understood her ambitions beyond simple capsule collections or collaborations — until Fabletics. Now, its former chief marketing officer, Kristen Dykstra, is Yitty's president; co-founder and CEO Adam Goldenberg is Lizzo's business partner.
"[Yitty] will give everyone the opportunity to speak for themselves when it comes to how their body should look and how they should feel in their body," Lizzo told Friedman. "I'm selling that more than I'm selling bodysuits or I'm selling shapewear. I'm selling a mentality that 'I can do what I want with my body, wear what I want and feel good while doing it.'"
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These aren't pieces to be hidden under your clothes, necessarily: There are a variety of fabrications and fits on offer, as well as a variety of colors and prints that can be shown off. Yitty debuts with three categories — Nearly Naked (which offers seamless shaping), Mesh Me (the brand's take on smoothing mesh) and Major Label (meant for lifestyle wear) — and around 100 individual pieces. Sizing ranges from XS to 6X; bras start at $49.95 and leggings at $69.95. The line will be sold on the Fabletics website and in shop-in-shops at 76 Fabletics stores, in addition to its own website.
Shapewear is a hot market. The most talked-about recent success story is Kim Kardashian's Skims, which recently doubled its valuation to $3.2 billion after its most recent fundraising round and seems poised to IPO. Spanx — which has had a stronghold over the category for many years — sold a majority stake to Blackstone Inc. in November, valuing the company at $1.2 billion. In a report published that same month, Allied Market Research suggested that the global compression wear and shapewear category could reach $6.95 billion by 2030.
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