About
Kate Hipkin
Consultant Designer & Creative Thinker
Kate Hipkin is a lingerie designer and creative thinker with three decades of experience in the intimate apparel industry.
Most recently immersed in fast fashion and mass production, Kate chose to pause, question, rethink and reimagine how our underwear is designed, made and valued.
The Story
Having spent over three decades designing intimate apparel, Kate Hipkin has worked at every level of the industry — from heritage brands to fast fashion and mass production. This experience has given her deep insight into how underwear is made, how businesses operate, and how creativity can become trapped in cycles of pressure and repetition.
Stepping away from that environment created the opportunity to rethink — to reconnect with why underwear matters, and to begin designing with greater intention and responsibility. Today, Kate focuses on shaping a different future for intimate apparel, where imagination leads, collaboration replaces competition, and change is approached with optimism and realism.
She works closely with long-standing manufacturing and mill partners in Asia — experts in innovations that scale — to explore new ways of creating products that balance beauty, function, and responsibility. With lived experience of real factories and real production challenges, Kate is passionate about designing affordable underwear that is cherished, not thrown away, and about finding practical, solutions that improve how underwear is designed, made, and valued.
Our Core Values
Creativity and imagination as the key to unlocking change.
Equal care for the maker, the wearer, the system, and the future.
Collaboration over competition.
Identifying change that scales for the benefit of all.
Moving beyond repetition to design intentionally and ethically.
Celebrating the true DNA of intimate apparel — and understanding why underwear really matters..
maybe add a graphic here - or put the values in boxes?
maybe won’t need the photo?
How I work?
Positioned at the front end of the design process, Kate recognises that imagination, insight, and experience can create forward thinking product with the greatest impact.
Kate works as a bridge between creativity and manufacturing reality, considering the full product cycle from initial ideation through to scalable production and end of life solutions. Partnering closely with mills and manufacturers, she explores new materials, technologies, and processes that open fresh possibilities for the industry.
Our approach turns risk into opportunity, designing garments that people love, whilst honouring the body and respecting the planet. The result is thoughtful, achievable design that moves beyond repetition towards meaningful, future-ready product.
Who we work with
Parteners logos…
Are you looking to design differently?
Let’s explore what’s possible together.