Located in Industry City, a historic intermodal shipping, warehousing, and manufacturing complex on the Upper New York Bay waterfront in Brooklyn, there lies a little lingerie shop called Rue Du Paradis. The name, French for “paradise street,” is just as fitting for its founder’s journey to the States as her lingerie is for her customers.
Enter Fanny Karaman: a half French, half Turkish lawyer turned American entrepreneur. When I asked her what inspired her drastic career change, she simply stated she liked to create and wanted to be an entrepreneur from a young age. However, young Fanny was also a realist: she didn’t want to center her collegiate studies around a career with a poor success rate.
“You either need connections or money to make it in the fashion industry,” Fanny explains. “I had neither.”
To give herself the best chance at financial security in order to start her own business, she chose to study and practice law. Despite being born and raised in Germany, she tapped into the French side of her French and Turkish roots and took to her legal studies in France. To many, passing the bar would be the end of the line. To Fanny, it was only the beginning.
Not only did she pass the bar in France, but she passed it in the States as well. At this point in her life, she knew she had expertise in two fields: a) international tax law, and b) sewing lingerie. She began her lingerie journey by working on her first panty collection, sewing both before and after her Parisian workdays.
“I then realized that designing the lingerie was less than half the battle. In reality, I would spend 95% of my time selling to lingerie stores,” Fanny says.
While figuring out what it meant to have a lingerie brand that was more conscious of the environment, she thought about sharing the process of creation itself. The idea led her to a lingerie-making workshop held at her own or her friend’s houses. These workshops made her realize that every single body was unique and that standard sizes were just not made to fit us: the concept of bespoke lingerie was born! From growing online, to opening a one-month pop-up store in New York’s bustling SOHO, she found a home for her brand by leasing a storefront in Brooklyn’s Industry City.
You may be asking yourself: what makes her lingerie stand out from mainstream brands like Victoria’s Secret? Well, for one, Fanny addresses the fact that the lingerie industry isn’t making the garments fit us. It’s making us try to fit the garments (and, by doing so, harming our psychological well-being).
“The patterns don’t take into account our real bodies. You are not an issue; your body is not an issue. It’s just that the industry is not made for us,” Fanny states. “It’s because the brands care more for the aesthetic of the shoot and the idea of beauty or sexiness, they have than the actual customer satisfaction.”
Unlike name lingerie brands, her brand’s biggest influence is and always has been her customers. It’s how people feel when they look at themselves in made-to-measure lingerie. And she says the word “people” purposefully. Being an all-inclusive brand means lingerie isn’t marketed as a means of objectifying women.
“I am not selling sex or tapping into an industry focusing on the male gaze. I want lingerie to feel like jewelry. Expensive jewelry is an investment, made to be worn, so that you fall in love with yourself when you look in the mirror” Fanny says.
Her storefront does take the purchasing process of most high-end jewelers. She treats it as a cocooning moment for the customer. From the moment they come through the doors of her boutique, she makes every detail about them. With her customers, she dives into the curated selection of French lace she has on display, bringing out the unique pigments of each person’s skin, eye color, hair color, while also taking into account life events such as breastfeeding, illness, plastic surgery and age, all in a gender affirming way. In addition to being extremely focused on customer satisfaction, Rue du Paradis’ mission also encompasses sourcing sustainable materials with ethical manufacturers.
“Sustainability isn’t just about longevity of product–it’s about ethics in factories and treatment of workers,” Fanny explains. “I wouldn’t define my brand as sustainable, because anything that is not second hand is not sustainable, period. I just try to be conscious of Mother Earth.”
As an expert on all thing's lingerie, I naturally had to ask for the sake of Old Cow Media: does a person’s taste in lingerie change as they get older versus when they’re younger? To that, Fanny says it’s more about the psychology behind it, not the designs.
“When younger people come to me, you can see they generally have someone in mind when they design,” she says.
However, as we go through life, she explains it stops being about external validation and/or pleasing someone else. Real maturity comes through pleasing ourselves, loving ourselves, and giving back to our amazing bodies.
“The more mature my customers, the more they look at themselves for themselves, not anyone else,” Fanny states. “If they want to have a little fun wearing them (or taking them off), hey, good for them!”
In a city obsessed with fast-paced entrepreneurship and growth, Fanny insists on taking a slow, organic approach to her business. In an industry plagued by profiting off of people’s insecurities and designing within the confines of the male gaze, Fanny Karaman paves the path to Paradise Street. Or as she likes to call it, Rue Du Paradis.
So, to those who believe they’re too old, too fat, too skinny or the “wrong gender” to be wearing a certain style of lingerie, listen to Fanny: you only have that issue when you’re trying to make clothes fit you, not the other way around.
Fanny will be joining us for an upcoming podcast so please reach out with any questions you may have for her.
Check out Fanny’s shop here: Rue du Paradis (rueduparadislingerie.com)
Article Written by Anesa Feratovic
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