It’s been thirteen years since I launched this little handmade lingerie brand. A lot has changed since then. But, somehow, a lot has stayed exactly the same.

We are still a small team of women, making our lingerie in-house in Santiago, Chile. We still work in small quantities, we still do a ridiculous amount of things ourselves, and we still care deeply about the little details that make a piece feel like Toru & Naoko.

I’ve never been particularly good at showing you what happens behind the scenes. You see the finished pieces, the campaigns, the pretty photos, the new collections — but not necessarily the people, the work, the mistakes, the improvisation and the very unglamorous parts that make all of that possible.

I got into writing about two years ago, and for a while I’ve been wanting to create a space for that here. Somewhere we could open the doors a little wider and let you in.

So, this is the first post.

And I thought I’d start with Sicily.

What you see vs. what actually happens

Last month, I came back from a short trip to Sicily with two friends who also happen to be models. If you’re just looking at our campaign photos or seeing a loose story here and there on Instagram, it might be hard to imagine how a small brand like ours pulls something like that off.

The answer, mostly, is improvisation.

One of the main reasons a small brand like ours is still here after thirteen years — against quite a few odds — is the people behind it.

Take Sofi, for example. She’s our head seamstress, but that title doesn't really cover everything she does. She scales patterns, works on fittings, develops new samples with me and plans production alongside Michi, who runs our logistics and operations.

You can find Michi organizing international shipments, dealing with the everyday chaos of running a small office, solving problems, checking inventory or, sometimes, simply sitting down and labeling products.

There aren’t really very many “that’s not my job” moments around here.

And then there’s me.

From my living room to thirteen years later

Toru & Naoko started as a one-woman shop.

I launched on Etsy, sewing made-to-order lingerie from my home in southern Chile. Back then, I had to teach myself everything: how to build a website, how to photograph products, how to package orders, how to deal with international customs, how to answer customers, how to run a business.

Thirteen years later, I’m no longer the person taking every package to the post office or answering every single customer email (although, occasionally, I still do).

But I’m still the web designer. The photographer. Sometimes the model. The marketing department. The person making content. The person looking at the numbers. And, yes, sometimes you can even find me packing orders or tending the shop in Barcelona.

I’ve basically collected jobs along the way.

(Santiago studio, during my last visit)

And one of the things that has allowed us to survive for this long is keeping our overhead small. We don’t have a huge marketing department or a production studio or a big content team. A lot of what you see is made by us, with what we already have.

It’s not necessarily the most glamorous thing to admit.

But I think it’s worth sharing.

So… how did we end up in Sicily?

Feli and Meli are two Argentine friends I met through photography. (yes, I also work as a photographer on the side — small business survival 101.)

We had already shot together in my home, and one afternoon I mentioned that I’d be willing to pay for a trip somewhere in Europe this summer if they were happy to model our newest collection.

They immediately said yes.

A couple of months later, I booked three flights to Catania and a tiny Airbnb for the three of us. And that was basically the plan. We would shoot and make content. We would try to get enough beautiful images and videos to make the trip worthwhile.

And, of course, we would also eat, drink, swim, sunbathe, laugh and spend time together. Which is exactly what happened.

We shot a little bit every day, usually around whatever else we wanted to do. Sometimes it was a proper shoot. Sometimes it was me grabbing my phone because the light was good and saying, wait, stay there for a second.

            (me shooting Feli at the beach, with people bathing at the back)

 

This is what making content for a small brand actually looks like most of the time. It’s never been a production team and a call sheet for us. It’s your friend standing on a balcony while you hold an iPhone. And honestly, I like it that way.

(Me shooting Meli in our Naoko dress, right next to other tourists shooting their content)

Then Mount Etna decided we weren’t leaving

On the day we were supposed to fly home, Mount Etna erupted. We were told we would have to stay on the island for another 48 hours. Feli had work the following day, so waiting it out wasn’t really an option.

So we decided to take matters into our own hands. We took a couple of trains, somehow made our way off the island and eventually reached Naples, where we managed to fly back to Barcelona. Not exactly the smooth ending to a photoshoot trip, but somehow it feels very on-brand.

(A photo of Etna erupting shot on my phone from the train)

The part you can’t manufacture

I’m still editing all the content we shot in Sicily. And one of the things I love most when I look through it is how comfortable the girls look wearing the pieces. But more than that, you can see how comfortable they feel with me.

That’s something I don’t think you can manufacture.

There’s a familiarity there. We know each other. We trust each other. They know what I’m looking for when I point my camera at them, and I know when to put the camera down and let them just be.

It’s the same reason I can stop in the middle of working from home, put on a piece, grab my phone and shoot an ad in five minutes.

There is no big production behind it. There is just us. And I think that’s what I want this blog to be about. Not just the finished product, but everything that happens around it.

The people who make it. The places we go. The things we learn. The business decisions that nobody sees. The beautiful days and the stressful ones. The ridiculous amount of hats a small team has to wear to keep a brand alive.

(The girls on the Ferry ride from Mesina to reggio calabria)

We work hard. We’ve learned a lot. We’ve trained ourselves to do a little bit of everything. And we are incredibly lucky to be able to make a living doing something we love.

After thirteen years, we still don’t take that for granted.

So welcome behind the scenes.

There’s a lot more to come.

XX
Cami