I wish this were a comeback letter. But it’s a farewell.
 
It’s been just over a decade since the underargument concept struck me like lightning.
 
It was April 2015. I was working as a Marketing Director for a fast fashion brand, exhausted from selling conformity dressed up as individuality. One morning, I woke up with a wordplay and a vision: to create a lingerie brand that would centre women’s stories and refuse to reduce their bodies to fickle trends or some normative idea of sexy. Everything we’d do would be rooted in realness and empowerment.

___The underargument was born.

I’d never felt more obsessed with an idea. So I got to work. I enrolled in a lingerie pattern-making course. Learned to sew lingerie. Registered the business. Co-designed my logo. And got it tattooed on my middle finger (badly too, but it felt very underargument: just awesome, not perfect).

 
I built and rebuilt the website (for those who remember — how sexy was that first version, right?). Wrote every single word of content (except the anti-casting stories, of course!). Navigated all the tedious legal and business stuff: business plan, trademark, logistics, taxes, customs… Travelled to all the shows. Sourced and designed every single piece and poured myself into every detail. Every stitch. Every trim. Even the packaging.

 
I sampled and resampled until it all felt right. From the messages at the back of each garment to the care labels doubling as bookmarks, through to photographing 100+ anti-casting participants - every step has been about owning our story and empowering ourselves whole.

 
Years later, the underargument makes it into iconic global retailers (and I sincerely thank all the amazing stockists who believed in us!). We’re featured on 66 Minutes (France’s answer to 60 Minutes). Our anti-casting concept challenges the industry’s tired standards, the tokenised way people “do” body positivity, and makes headlines in The Guardian, with coverage spreading worldwide.

___It resonated because it was authentic, not another marketing fad. We walked our talk from the very core of what the underargument was always meant to be.

That kind of recognition was something I could have only ever dreamed of. And it felt so good seeing key players in the industry cheer us on and rally behind our message.
 
But then came the chaos: Brexit, pandemic, war, recession. Like many indie businesses, it’s been an uphill climb. Rising costs made it impossible for me to reconcile the brand's ethos with the reality of producing the conscious way I always have.
 
This brand has always been self-funded and while your love – your orders, your shares, your voice – kept me going, without partners to back its next chapter, this is no longer something I can successfully carry alone.
 
So this is it. I’m closing the underargument.

And while that’s hard to say, I’m proud. Proud of what we built. Proud of what we stood for. Proud of the movement we sparked. I'm endlessly grateful for the out-there idea I had on a random April morning in 2015, and the beautiful journey it's taken me on.

___One for the anti-casting...

To everyone who stepped in front of the lens and shared your truth: thank you. You made this brand what it was always meant to be: real, raw, human, and empowering. Together, we tore up the script on what women are supposed to act like, are expected to be and are allowed to say. I hope the experience stays with you as deeply as it will with me because I’ll carry it for a lifetime.
 
To Manon Ouimet and Ester Keate, you didn’t just photograph participants, you attuned your energy to each so you could instil confidence and capture essence. You made it look easy. You made magic real. I’ll miss our shoot days dearly and I hope we get to do that again some day. Thank you. For everything.

The underargument is closing but the fire behind it? Still burning. Here’s to more truth-telling, boundary-breaking, beautifully authentic work.
 
Uniquely yours,
Maïna Cissé
Founder of the underargument

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