Une Piece is an Australian retailer of women's swimwear, founded by Carly Brown in 2016. The brand's signature product is a one-piece swimsuit with long sleeves; the upper half of the suit resembling and functioning as a rashie. The suit provides its wearer with UPF50+[1] sun protection for their arms and back, and a zippered front offers a selectable amount of protection for the chest.[2] The "Original Sexie Rashie" design attracted favourable review in major fashion publications including Vogue,[3]Elle,[4]Marie Claire,[5] and Vanity Fair,[6] and won Brown second place in the Queensland University of Technology's Bluebox annual innovation challenge for 2017.[7] Brown later named the Huffington Post, London Times, and Vogue reviews as giving her a sense of validation.[8]
The suits are manufactured from a 4½ times chlorine resistant Italian fabric[9][10] and feature 28 pieces in their construction (compared to four in a typical rashie).[11] This structure is intended to "flatter and conceal", as a reviewer in The Times put it.[12] The design went through eleven iterations before being finalised[13] and is manufactured in a wide range of sizes: (Australian) sizes 6 to 18.[14] The broad range of sizes was a deliberate choice by Brown to make the product as accessible to as many women as practical, stating in an interview "It's not fair just because you aren't a size 8 or 10, you can't get access to beautiful products".[15]
Prior to founding Une Piece, Brown was a marketing manager for The Coca-Cola Company[13] and Revlon in London,[16] and a senior marketing manager for Uber in Australia.[16][17] The idea for the Une Piece design came to Brown when she was holidaying in Europe.[1][11] While undertaking market research for the product, she amassed a waiting list of over 500 buyers, convincing her of the product's viability.[1][18] The initial production run sold out within a week of availability[18] with future buyers facing a wait of over a month for the second run.[18] She left her position at Uber to work full-time on Une Piece in July 2016.[12]
The "Original Sexie Rashie" design was later joined by two variations with back zips in place of the front zip: the "Surfe Sexie Rashie" with a higher neck, and the "Twist Sexie Rashie" with a low-cut neck and twist detailing on the front. Une Piece also manufactures a conventional, halterneck one-piece swimsuit based on their "Twist Sexie Rashie" design.[19]
