Our Undie Making Process

January 25, 2021

Firstly (and quite importantly because it's cool) I'd like to remind you that the Tizz & Tonic studio is actually built up in an old cocktail lounge. That's right! In 2020 we took over a charming old bar/lounge and converted it into the best underwear clubhouse there ever was. And this is where all of our production happens.

Today, I'm giving you a quick peak at the behind-the-scenes of our daily panty production - how the collections are conceptualized to the final tagging of the garment.
Ready to slip into our world of undie making? Let's do this!

Planning the Collection

Before we get started on the manufacturing of our intimates, we have to go through the process of actually designing our collections and ordering our fabric.

Tizz & Tonic Underwear Collection Planning

Normally we start planning our colour and print collections about 4-5 months in advance. We derive a lot of our inspiration from places we’ve visited, cultures that have inspired us, beautiful spaces, music, food and drink culture. (Have you noticed?)

After we've brought our ideas to the table for a big creative brainstorm, we place a small order for fabric swatches and colour samples before making the final edit.

Once we are set on what we’d think you’re going to la-la-love for the upcoming collection, we place our order for the organic cotton. This typically takes around 2 months before it arrives to our studio. Our certified organic cotton comes from India and we work with a small print and dyeing company in the South city of Tiruppur.

The relationship between our team and our organic cotton provider has been established over a handful of years now - we work quite closely together in finalizing end colour outcomes and print placements. The team also gets weekly updates and sometimes even behind the scenes peaks of the cotton dyeing and printing progress before the fabric is finished, pressed, packaged and readied to be shipped to our little studio.

Generally, we received 2-3 big shipments of organic cotton fabric per year.

Shipment arriving at TIZZ & TONIC Bremen, Germany

Bolting the Fabric

Once the fabric has arrived, it gets quality checked and then bolted. This is a job we leave for Yanna, since she's a pro at it and gets a really great arm-workout.

Then as soon as it's bolted, the organic cotton hits the cutting table. In our small studio, we don’t have any fancy fabric cutting machines - we hand-cut all of our intimates, strategically placing the pattern pieces to get the ultimate usage out of our textiles. All fabric cut-offs are kept for bralette cups and linings, underwear gussets and accessories. Much of our collection is made-to-order but we do have a set amount of intimates that are pre-made based off of what we’ve sold in the past and we also try our best to keep our most popular sizes stocked and ready to go.

Making Underwear at Tizz and Tonic Walle

When the undies are cut and labeled with their retrospective sizes, they are handed off to our small team of seamstresses and the assembly begins!

Undie Assembly : Pin, Serge, Sew & Hem

The actual assembly is the best part because you can see the fabric transform from just three flat pieces to a wearable garment. The back, side-seams and gussets are sewn and/or serged and then pressed. Care labels and Tizz ‘YAY’ tags are tacked in just before we attach the hip-band elastic which is later enclosed by our hemming machine.

After the undie is totally assembled it gets its moment under our coverstitch machine for the final hemming process. The leg holes are hemmed as well as the enclosed elastic that sits arounds your hips or waist. We love this technique because it leaves a clean finish and keeps your undies in great shape (literally - it helps with the shape retention)!

This machine is a staff favourite by the way - very robust and speedy.

Final Touches

After the undies have been hemmed, we trim off all excess threads and apply a quick safely stitch where the hemming threads overlap for extra durability. The undies are then once again quality controlled, pressed and tagged.

Finally they are set aside in our stock room or added directly to orders and ready to be packed - hot off the needle!

Tizz and Tonic Organic Underwear with a Twist

Packaging it Up

As a mini brand, we're trying to do it better than the big guys. We don’t ship you plastic because we wouldn’t want to do that to you. One -time use plastic can be gross. Our packaging includes acid free and soy-based ink tissue paper (with little boobs on it), recycled paper hang tags and vegan stickers.

Soft Organic Cotton Bralettes made in Bremen

The much-adored paper packaging (which is sewn in-house) is also designed on recycled paper. And the compostable mailers that we chose to use are made from plants and non toxic, compostable resin. They come with two adhesive strips for at least two trips! So use them again if you need to make a return or hold onto it for the future incase you want to send something to a friend.

Ultimately, it's not in our interest to send you trash, just beautiful organic cotton intimates packaged delightfully.

There you have it - a quick overview of our underwear making process. Make sure to connect with us on Instagram: @tizzandtonic as we post daily videos of behind-the-scenes and the making of our collections!