Freya Brand Guidelines: Eveden’s 1998 Label From a Desborough Corset Factory

A label launched inside a company dating from 1920.

Freya did not begin as a company of its own. It is a British lingerie, swimwear and activewear label launched in 1998 by Eveden, according to the timeline published by its present owner, Wacoal Europe; English Wikipedia’s entry on Wacoal gives the same year. No individual founder is named for the label. Freya’s website says the brand is “designed and produced by Wacoal Europe,” and its copyright line reads Wacoal EMEA Ltd.

The business behind the label is far older. Wacoal Europe’s timeline says Eveden was founded by Mr S D Ryall in 1920. The UK register, Companies House, shows that the company now called Wacoal EMEA was incorporated on 1 November 1920 as Unity Corset Factories Limited. It became Fantasie Textiles at the end of 1978, Stirling Brands in 1993 and Eveden in 1995, the name it kept until December 2014.

Its home is Desborough, a town in Northamptonshire with its own corset history. English Wikipedia says local men founded the Desborough Co-operative Society in 1863, and that the society went from shops to a corset and lingerie factory. Wacoal Europe’s timeline says Eveden’s branded business moved to the CWS Corsetry Factory in Desborough in 1989, the same year Ritz Design Group bought the company. A management buyout followed in 1992, in order, the timeline says, to focus on the larger cup size market. Companies House still lists the registered office at The Corsetry Factory, Desborough, and describes the business as the manufacture of women’s underwear.

From a 1998 launch to a family of named lines.

Freya arrived six years after that buyout. The timeline records the first J cup bra in 1999 and a first moulded bra, from Fantasie, in 2000. In 2002 Eveden moved into what it calls the fuller figure market by buying the American brand Goddess. Fauve lingerie followed in 2007 and Elomi in 2008. In 2010 Eveden bought the French lingerie and swimwear label Huit.

Freya grew sideways over the same years. The timeline dates Freya Active to 2008 and Freya Lounge to 2010. Today the website sells three main lines: lingerie, what it calls “bra-sized swimwear,” and activewear. It says the range “goes right up to a K cup.” Named collections on the site include Deco, Offbeat, Tailored and Fascinate, and it has separate shops for the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany.

Wacoal Europe’s modern slavery policy, dated August 2026, says all its garments are made in factories wholly owned by the Wacoal Group or with partners of long standing, and that it deals with those factories directly. The timeline records a jointly owned manufacturer in Sri Lanka, Eveden Timex, set up in 2006. English Wikipedia says the former Co-op corset factory in Desborough makes lingerie and swimwear, and that the site also holds a warehouse and a factory shop. The timeline adds a Kettering distribution centre, opened in 2007.

The brand’s reach is another company figure. When Wacoal agreed to buy Eveden in 2012, Fashion Market reported Eveden’s statement that it had some 5,000 retail customers in 50 countries. Freya’s website now says Wacoal Europe’s products are stocked by more than 5,000 retailers in more than 30 countries.

Freya has also appeared on trade shortlists. Underlines magazine reported in October 2018 that Freya was among three Wacoal Europe brands that were finalists in the Drapers Awards, and in July 2019 that Freya, Elomi and Goddess were finalists for Lingerie Brand of the Year in the Drapers Independents Awards. In May 2026 the trade site Lingerie Briefs described interest in Freya’s reimagined styles at a showcase for specialty store buyers.

How the category presents itself.

Hosiery and high-street lingerie are sold at close quarters. A pair of tights is usually bought in a flat packet or from a hanger, a bra from a rail and a vest from a folded stack, so much of the design work falls on the things around the garment: the pack, the hook, the shelf and the shop front. Type on a legwear packet has a practical job to do, since it has to carry a name, a style and a size in a small space.

Retail shapes the look as much as print does. Some names in this field are found mainly in their own shops, often in shopping malls and on high streets, where the shop front is the largest sign the brand has. Oniverse, the Italian group behind Calzedonia and Intimissimi, says it sells its collections exclusively through single-brand stores. Others reach customers through department stores, or as a concession inside another retailer: in 2005 the trade paper TextilWirtschaft reported Intimissimi shop-in-shops opening inside Victoria’s Secret in the United States.

Colour is often seasonal. A wall of tights or swimwear arranged by shade can work as display and stock at once, and a change of season can change the look of a shop without touching its fittings. Plain folded basics pull the other way, relying on cut, material and label rather than pattern, so that the same shop can hold both a bright display and a quiet one.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, who owns it and what it says about where its products are made, with the company’s own claims marked as such. The palettes and specimens here are our own.

A Japanese owner and a 2017 identity.

Ownership changed in 2012. Fashion Market reported on 1 April that year that Wacoal Holdings of Japan had agreed to buy the Eveden Group, listing Fantasie, Freya, Huit, Fauve, Elomi and Goddess among its brands, and that Eveden would become a subsidiary. Tracy Lewis, then Eveden’s chief executive, said the two companies shared a similar business ethos, culture and values. Wacoal was founded in Japan in 1949 by Koichi Tsukamoto, English Wikipedia says, and is based in Kyoto.

The names followed the ownership. Companies House shows the holding company as Wacoal Eveden Limited from January 2013, then Wacoal Europe Ltd from the end of 2014, and FashionUnited reported the rename as taking effect in January 2015. The older company became Wacoal EMEA in December 2014. Wacoal Europe calls itself a leader in the A to K cup, 28 to 48 back size market; that is the company’s own description.

A documented design overhaul came in 2017. Transform magazine reported in July that year that the London agency Notable had repositioned Freya, Fantasie, Wacoal and Elomi and given them new visual identity elements, with the aim of reaching a wider audience. In an October profile the magazine explained the problem. Notable’s Laura Tan said customers loved the products but the portfolio was hard to navigate, and that Freya and Fantasie had become the two least distinct of the sub-brands. Freya was meant for younger customers, and Tan suggested its audience had grown older with it.

Transform reported that Notable set Freya apart from rival brands aimed at the same age group by building a lifestyle into it: women out in the world doing things and seeing friends, with models never pictured alone. Clare Styles, Notable’s creative director, said Freya had become a little too static. So the agency drew patterns that could change with the seasons and a colour palette meant to evolve, so that the brand would not date again. Fantasie, freed from that overlap, moved toward a “full-day” look. The magazine reported the new branding as still rolling out in late 2017. Laura Simon, Wacoal Europe’s brand director, said each brand would have its own tone of voice and look and feel.

For a design guide, Freya shows how a label inside a family of brands can be separated by behaviour and pattern as much as by logo. Compare Marks & Spencer, another long-running British seller of lingerie, and Maidenform, an American bra name with its own advertising history. For this guide we use a deep berry and a marigold with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Freya’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.