This Gen Z Sister Duo Created A Cult Favorite Underwear Brand

Picture this: the year is 2019. You're a fourteen year old high school student and/or eighteen year old college student telling your friends that you're launching a fashion business. Naturally, they ask for more information—they want to know what exactly you're making and selling. You tell them that it's an underwear brand and you're met with a hodgepodge of reactions: some think it's chic (because it is), others try their best to hide their side eyes, and some present you with the inevitable question of why underwear? This is an experience shared by sisters and co-founders of cult favorite brand Siren Basics, Brenda and Clara Liang. And their shared response to that inevitable question was simple: underwear deserves to be cute and playful, too.

Now, Siren Basics is a cult favorite brand and consistently rising internet darling co-signed by it girls like Devon Lee Carlson, Chloe Cherry, Rachel Sennott and, yes, Britney Spears.

Before Siren Basics launched back in 2021, Brenda and Clara were both students—Brenda, a freshman at NYU and Clara, a high school freshman in central New Jersey. Neither of them had a background in design, but both had a casual interest in fashion and aesthetics. While going through the motions and navigating everyday's ebbs and flows, they couldn't help bug notice, as the already business savvy ladies that they were, gaps in the market. "The idea [for Siren Basics] sparked from what a lot of entrepreneurs are doing where they're looking for a product and they can't find it," Brenda says. "I was particularly looking for underwear that felt very inspired and playful and beautiful, but I did notice that it was so expensive for the kind of style that I was looking for."

Brenda found that the chicest underwear was often geared towards monumental events like honeymoons and valentines day, and had the price tags to match. This frustration culminated in a phone call. Then and there, as Brenda sat in her NYU dorm and Clara sat at the dining table with her father in their family home, it was decided that they would start an underwear brand. "We loved the idea of having undergarments that were celebratory for the everyday," Brenda said. So, when starting Siren Basics, it was important for the pieces to be playful yet refined, functional, and comfortable. "We focus on striking a balance between what's actually functional for women and also what is aesthetically pleasing," Clara adds.

It was also important for their products to be sold at a reasonable, accessible price point. Today, Siren Basics underwear sells for $10-$24, while their bikini tops and bottoms sell for $48 each and pajama sets sell for $98—both newer categories for the brand.

When I asked what the biggest misconception about starting a business is, the duo laughed and agreed that the process is incredibly "unsexy." Entrepreneurship ran in the family and their parents were as supportive as they come but, at the end of the day and as teenagers, knowing where to start was tricky. "The backend is very messy and very difficult. There's a lot of ups and downs. Even years after, we're still learning and we're still trying to grow," Clara says. "You need to have the courage to just start building it and pushing it out."

As not only young women, but women of color, there was an unfortunately inevitable component of not being taken seriously. "People wanted us to prove ourselves and assumed that this was just a hobby, not something we were actually passionate about," Clara says. "I feel like people now are starting to realize, okay, they are actually building a brand."

"It's kind of like anything you do as a woman of color, you have to compensate a little bit for that. But I also think for me personally, I have that delusional self-belief that it literally doesn't matter and that's not going to stop us from going where we are going," Brenda adds. "But those disadvantages are so real and there are a lot of social hurdles to climb over."

Siren Basics is entirely family owned and run, never having accepted outside investments. So, as college and high school students respectively, it was very much a bootstrapping situation, and learning how to position themselves in the social media landscape was a bit of a learning curve.

Now, when you visit the Siren Basics Instagram page, a feeling of coziness and comfort is evoked and the underwear is presented as dainty and romantic. You'll find a generally minimal and relatable—both of which were very much intentional. "With any brand, you want it to feel aspirational, but we also want it to feel relatable and that's sort of also the origins of Siren as a brand," Brenda says. "Not everyone can spend $85 on a pair of underwear."

The majority of their marketing was done via word of mouth, though. That's the thing with a Gen Z founded brand that actually appeals to a Gen Z need—you can tell your friends about it, your friends will post about it and then, before you know it, all the it-girls of the internet have heard about your cute, comfortable, and affordable underwear brand and want what you're selling.

While 'siren' has become a bit of a buzzy word in fashion, it carries meaning for the sisters. "We derived the name from our parents native language, which is Mandarin," Brenda shares. "In Chinese, siren means private." The sisters don't believe that underwear has to be a private thing or taboo topic of discussion, but do understand that it's an intimate garment. "Underwear is such an intimate piece that your body interacts with on a daily basis," Brenda adds.

And, despite the side-eyes and confusion that she faced from her peers at the age of 14, Clara doesn't think underwear should be taken too seriously. "It shouldn't be as serious as sometimes it's made out to be, and I think that can really be a form of self-expression. We really focus on the individualistic aspect of underwear. You can wear it however you want, if it's for yourself, if it's for an accessory, decoration, or however it is," Clara says. "When we're doing our shoots and when we're posting creative content, one thing we really want to keep in mind is just having women feel confident in their bodies and feel great in what they're wearing. And underwear is a great supplement to that considering how intimate it is."

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