“How we cherish our whole being, as we are today, and how we present ourselves to the public should be a trendless choice”
BY ELLA GAUCI, IMAGES BY FLORUISSE
For many LGBTQIA people, lingerie can be daunting. Looking for gender-affirming or gender-inclusive brands can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Often high street brands simply don’t cater for the clothing that we’re after.
That’s where Floruisse comes in. This exciting new brand is dedicated to empowering LGBTQIA individuals through inclusive designs that celebrate and amplify comfort, confidence, and self-expression. The US-based brand has changed the game with their revolutionary designs, including the special tucking garment Lili.
With community values and LGBTQIA inclusion at the heart of their ethos, DIVA spoke to Floruisse’s owner and designer Margaret Karabetyan.
You can find out more about Floruisse here: floruisse.com/
How did Floruisse begin and what was the driving force behind it?
During my college years in Los Angeles, I saw my first drag show at a club called Plaza, on La Brea. The Queens on stage brought a sense of freedom I had never seen before; they radiated pure joy and celebrated their beauty, which to this day resonates with me. Fast forward fifteen years to conversations with friends who are transgender women and drag queens, who shared that traditional tucking methods were often uncomfortable and inconvenient. These moments nurtured the development of “Lili”, our engineered, highly tested and rated tucking garment. Lili, along with the entire Floruisse collection, embodies this ethos of inclusive freedom, self-expression, and feeling sexy in our own skin.
Your mission statement “Wear as you are” is so powerful. What do you hope your brand brings to the LGBTQIA community? And why is this messaging so vital in 2024?
Referring back to our Queens at Plaza, they transcended not by necessarily what they were wearing, but more so by the opportunity to freely and fully express themselves. How do we show up for ourselves, whether on a stage or not? Our brand Floruisse means “to bloom” in Latin — how divine it is for a flower to feel its own petals unfurl. “Wear as you are” is our way of shifting the mindset around aspirational dressing: to dress for who you are, rather than who you think you should be. How we cherish our whole being, as we are today, and how we present ourselves to the public should be a trendless choice. In 2024, there is still a stigma around clothing and gender expression. We hope that our collections are part of the movement to normalise fluidity in dressing.
You work closely with LGBTQIA organisations to help with suicide prevention. Why is this focus so important to your brand ethos?
I lost my friend to suicide a couple of years ago, he was inspiring, lovely, creative and dynamic. He was a fashion designer who built a colourful life creating custom garments for Queens. This is for his memory. Proper mental health support is difficult to access here in the US, and for LGBTQIA young people it becomes even more challenging due to fear of discrimination and concerns over confidentiality. We support these organisations with the hope that the youth have a safe place to go that will empower and guide them to be their most healthy self.
Sustainability is also at the heart of Floruisse – what prompted that and what have you learnt through making sustainable choices?
I’ve been in the fashion industry since the age of fifteen, as a designer, pattern maker and in retail, and I have seen all of fashion’s dirty secrets! The media talks a lot about fast fashion, and how the short life of garments and trends causes immense waste, but what we don’t talk about is the mind-boggling waste used even before a garment gets into your hands. At Floruisse we make a simple choice when our garments are being shipped from the manufacturer: all garments are batched in one big bag to avoid those familiar individual plastic bags, which also saves on emissions. When shipping to our customers, (yes, the outside plastic bags are inevitable for protection), we choose recycled options with compostable material for interior packaging. These are only a couple of examples, but choices we make with the hope to normalise less plastics in this industry.
What has been the response from the community towards your products?
Recently, we had a booth at a pop-up marketplace in Seattle, and it was a joy to personally connect with the customers and community. From women discovering items for a boudoir photoshoot who fell in love with our lace bodysuit, to couples shopping together who could both wear our seamless bra, the response warmed my heart and showed me that these products truly are for everybody. As a new e-commerce business, we are still navigating a connection beyond emailing customers. So far from our communication, the review that stood out the most was from a transgender woman, who wore the tucking panty “Lucy” at a rave, with rave reviews!
What do you hope is going to be the future for Floruisse?
Our forever vision and goal is that Flourisse be a safe place of expression. No matter the LBGTQIA politics of where you live in the world, it is our hope that our brand and products are recognized as a stable beacon of self-love and sensuality. We hope to grow our collection with more styles per customer requests, including thongs and bra set options. I also hope to participate in more pop-up events and continue to personally connect with our customers. As the mentality of brick-and-mortar stores shifts to be more gender inclusive, we hope to connect with wholesale accounts so customers can try on and feel our fabrics in person. The more people are encouraged to wear as they are, hopefully, the more fulfilling dressing and self-expression can become for everybody and every person.
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