Luxury undercover

Animal prints will never go out of fashion, says McGill

McGill is serious about lingerie

CLASSICAL, Practical or down-right Naughty. What are you? Do you pick out lingerie that’s kept elegant at floor-length, made with the finest silk and adorned with lace and fur trimming?

Maybe you prefer practical comfort that promises support and a gentle lift perhaps? Or are you the sort who likes to keep the unmentionables to the barest minimum — silky soft cups, strings, three teeny triangles — all tastefully done, of course.

This is bespoke lingerie and Naomi McGill can fulfil your wildest fancies. With two studios, one in Australia and another on the other side of the world in London (both by invitation only), McGill can also fly to your doorstep if you need help with colours, embellishments and fittings.

All for a price, of course. A couture piece from Harlette De Falaise (www.harlette.com) starts at £250 for a basic bra and knickers set and it can soar to an incredible £7,000.

For its Platinum range, styled with precious stones and metal, the sky’s the limit and designs are sometimes patented.

McGill sources for top-of-the-range laces and fabric from Italy and France.

“Everything’s hand-made,” she says. “In Saudi Arabia, the first thing they check is the finishing. If they are not satisfied with the workmanship, they send it back.”

Saudi, London and the US are big markets for McGill. But lingerie lovers are everywhere, clients who want a piece custom-made to commemorate a special occasion like a wedding or an anniversary.

Lingerie also makes a good gift. Quite a number of men place orders for extravagant nightwear that’s definitely different from the usual fragrance or jewellery.

“Once, a mother came into the studio and bought a piece as a gift for her daughter’s wedding. She said it will be with the daughter forever, like an heirloom,” says McGill.

“That changed my perception. I realised that this is something that can be kept and enjoyed for years.”

She has always had an eye for delicate lingerie, from when she was a little girl. As a young teen she would go shopping and come home with a bag of lingerie.

“My mother used to say ‘You’re 13. Why do you need lingerie?’. But I guess that it was a grown-up thing, so I was drawn to it.”

Both her parents are British-born though her father is of Russian-Lithuanian descent. Her grandfather was asked to do some work for the army in Australia, so the whole family moved there.

Before McGill turned 15, she received a scholarship to the Bond University in the Gold Coast where she studied Bachelor of Computing Science.

She started her career in the telecommunications industry and had worked in Vietnam and Nepal. After she got her MBA, she worked in an investment bank in London. She also has secured a Masters in Finance. As part of the thesis for her MBA, McGill interviewed Australian-based luxury residential towers developer Soheil Abedian.

Just as she was wrapping up her chat with him, she asked if he had any advice for a young woman just starting out her career in the competitive world of finance.

“I was expecting him to say be cut-throat... you know, that sort of thing, but all he said was, follow what your heart wants to do and everything else will fall into place. That resonated in me for sometime.”

It led her to find out more about her favourite thing — lingerie. “I studied the market in 2005 just when I was starting out in finance.”

Then she surprised everyone by quitting her coveted job in an investment bank in London to work at Selfridges for £6 an hour. McGill worked there for about six months, trying to get an insight into the industry.

Then came her chance. She managed to sell the single most expensive piece of lingerie on the floor. It was priced at £1,300.

“It was two-piece. The knickers had crystals strings. It wasn’t even Swarsvorski... there wasn’t much to it. To me, it was not worth that much.”

But sold it she did. And McGill learned two very important things in the process. One, there’s a market for very expensive lingerie. “I learned that there’s a space in the world for extravagant things.”

And, two, there’s an art to selling lingerie. “£1,300 was nothing to the buyer. If I had something more expensive, she would have taken it. She just wanted to please herself and her partner. And she wasn’t the thinnest of women either.”

After extensive research, she started meeting clients early this year. She’s also keen to share what she calls the art of selling lingerie.

Recently she learned that a lecturer, Reem Asaad, from Dar Al-Hekma, a private woman’s college in Jeddah, was single-handedly trying to realise the Government’s three-year-old decision to allow women to work in lingerie shops serving women.

“Prior to this, Saudi women could not try on their bras before buying. If they wondered about size and fit, the male staff will sometimes look at them and gauge what size they are,” says McGill.

“There are black stickers on the packaging of briefs, covering the picture of models wearing them. So you can’t even see the design of the panties you are buying. And if you try to remove the stickers, it could get you into trouble with the religious authorities.”

McGill realised that if Asaad was going to get women to staff lingerie shops, these women needed to be trained. She got in touch with Asaad and organised a two-week training session at the college. Almost 30 women attended the session and McGill taught them about the different types of bras, the correct fit and sales psychology, something she learned from her experience on the retail floor.

After much thought, McGill has decided to start a retail line to complement her couture range. She hopes it will hit the stores sometime next year.