A rose by any other name? It’s a cliché, we know, but names still seem to fascinate us and we thought we’d take a little time to explain all the names we have at Prairie Wear.
Our “Prairie”, you may know, comes from a common love of the amazing, vast and actually quite global landscape of green grass and blue skies that is the transition from the coastal to the mountainous on almost all the continents! To us the prairie represents a time of transition, of change and also a renewal – as Holli often says, no matter how harsh the winter is, the prairie flowers always come up again and welcome in the sun.
During tour development and wear-testing phase, we got to see many of the strange and somewhat scary things that women get sent home in after surgery, and one that always stands out was a pink elasticky binder that was scratchy and ineffectual. Our mission was to create something better!
We are all about body-friendly design that has a soft-touch wherever it comes into contact with skin and still manages to hold you tightly enough to ensure compression efficacy and caringly enough to help you feel supported and comforted while you get better, the name just seemed self-evident – what could be comforting and supportive and positive than a hug? And so the “Hugger” was named!
When the feedback on our first Hugger was so overwhelmingly positive and thankful and we kept getting requests for a slightly “lighter” version we wasted no time in creating a new, less compressive and more every-day version which we’ve just launched – yay!
The challenge on this, though, is that the second bra is also made with the super clever seamless weave technology and all the advantages from the first, and while it’s much more easy-going, it’s still got that core comfort and support of a hug – so what should we call this one?
We quickly realised that actually, BOTH these great garments are definitely Huggers, but now we needed to add to their stories to help us and you tell them apart.
We like to try and keep a global viewpoint as much as possible, so while we work in English (the universal language of work!), it didn’t seem right to pick any one language over another in the naming of our Huggers so we went classic and looked to Latin – the precursor to so much! – for inspiration and eventually came round to calling our original post-surgical & active recover Hugger the “Prima” or “first” (think also Prima ballerina!) while our every day wire-free bra Hugger is called the “Vida” from “life” or “living” indicating it’s place as a go-to every day garment for those who love to live in a hug!
There’s so much that goes on behind the scenes in small companies like ours, so we hope this series of “Behind the Scenes” blogs will give you a little glimpse into our world and thinking. If there’s anything you’d love to hear more about just let us know!
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