Cheek Frills: The story behind the ethically produced panties

A YOUNG cub, in any professional sloth, is expected to jump through hoops before becoming selective about how they earn their honey.

At 21, I was asked by an editor to get Botox for a cover story the magazine was doing on “The Youth Corridor”.

A few years later they asked me to review brassieres for the well-endowed lady even though I didn’t possess breasts of my own — and the only ones that tickled my fancy were deep fried and Halal. Saying no to editors is akin to pinning a DNR notice on your by-line — especially for freelancers. So when asked by this paper if I was free to speak to Made in Chelsea’s Rosie Fortescue, about the knicker collection she was promoting with her twin sister Lily, I chose to jump.

It’s not like I had to road test the undergarment myself. Cheek Frills, launched this past October, are ethically produced panties, bras and vests made from luxurious Italian cotton modal.

You can get them in sets of eight, emblazoned with the Days of the Week and Cities of the World and just listening to 22-year-old Lilly — who also designed and masterminded the meteoric rise of said brand, almost had me dabbling in drag.

The €70 it would cost per pack to sample said delights curbed my experimental urges, but her enthusiastic and impassioned shop talk means it’s not hard to see that she is the reason why, just under a year after launching, Cheek Frills are in hot demand with buyers from Hong Kong to New York.

The problem is, no matter how impressive Cheek Frills’ business model is, Lilly herself admits that the only reason her product has captured the attention of the mainstream press is due to the pretty, pale cash cow who parades about in them for the ad campaign.

Rosie Fortescue is the star of Made in Chelsea, a reality TV series charting the loves, loathes and preening psychosis of a bunch of spoilt, selfish and often hideously-looking rich kids. I’ve a highly addictive nature, particularly with television, and such scripted reality programmes have always been the black-tar heroin of the entertainment world.

Any interview would involve having to sit down and shoot up on the crude, cheap substitute for culture that has been systematically ruining original programing over the last decade. Once I acclimatised to the shoddy production values, revolting morals and shady stereotyping, would I be able to pull my snout back from the trough?

“It’s about investing in other people’s lives,” Rosie explains to me when I meet her to discuss her sister’s pants in Brown Thomas, who exclusively stock the brand. “Learning about them and growing with them. We are so relatable. It might be called MiC, and people might think we’re über-privileged but we go through the break ups, the dramas, the fights that everyone else goes through.”

Everyone else does it without cameras. “It makes you talk about things you might not usually want to talk about and it has made me much more confident and outgoing as a person. And the producers are so nice, you always have that one person that you can talk to about what is going to happen in the scene.

“Who you can call up in the middle of the night to inform that you have had a big fight so they can organise to film you the next day. It’s only afterwards, when I watch it, that I get nervous.”

The cast watch each episode together on the day that it airs. “It’s better that way, as you’re not at home thinking, ‘God, that’ll be awkward when I meet that person in two days’ time’. We will be cringing together, cheering each other on and laughing at each other. We all know there is editing that goes into it. It’s made to look bitchier then it might have been meant.”

Which all sounds marvellously fun. But I can’t help thinking, if this show really is the real deal it sells itself as, then that screening room contained more than one terracotta tinted face of thunder.

She swears the show isn’t staged. “We’re not actors and actresses. If you have something serious to bring up with someone, and you trash it out the previous night, it just looks awkward when you recreate it on camera the next day.”

Which the show always does, a litany of loaded pauses and gesticulating faces occasionally struck dumb. “But if you are breaking up with someone, you can do that off camera. It’s kind of fairer,” she says (although her voice bellies the fact she’d fillet her true loves heart if it increased her screen time). “Then, when it is recreated for the camera, people are fighting about who gets to work the sympathy vote.”

Why would you put your friendship through such extenuating circumstances?

“When I asked my parents for their consent they said ‘Go with the right attitude, get whatever you can out of it in the same way they are using you for your profile’. I am fortunate for the exposure it has given me. It allows me to be my own boss.”

I turn and ask her sister if she would ever appear on the show? “Em… no. I respect them all. They are all doing it for their own reasons, but I would never do it. It’s not my thing.

“She works,” Rosie interjects. “It wouldn’t be feasible to film as well, as you have to be flexible. I had to cancel a load of important meetings last season because Louise was having a crisis with Spencer and, while she would understand why I wasn’t there, the viewers wouldn’t.”

“It’s not even about the work thing,” Lilly says.” I wouldn’t like to be edited, or my life to be documented in general.”

After leaving Downe House, alma mater of Mrs Middleton, Lilly did the norm for their set, taking a gap year and dropping out of College. “I studied English and Theology. But I quickly discovered that no one is going to make you work. So I decided to commit to Austique (the glamorous female boutique on the Kings Road who are also behind Cheek Frills) whom I have worked for since I was 16. It was the best decision I have ever made.

“My friends are only finishing college now and are having to start internships. But because I have proven myself as a sales girl, I’m straight in there, going to Milan and Paris, learning how to speak to buyers. Which is tough. It’s like trying to get a boy who has just proposed to his girlfriend to fall in love with you.” A rather unfortunate metaphor given that her sister is known for having an affair with her bestie’s fella on a TV show.

Cheek Frills are launching a Paddy panty specifically for the Irish market. It’s green and it has a four leaf clover on it (a spud might have been too on-the-nose). And while Rosie might be the right fit for opening doors with the media it can’t account for the brands spectacular success with punters. Before it was redesigned and launched with its famous face it was already outselling rival brands Cosabella and Hanky Panky.

“We service people aged 17-70,” Lilly concludes. “We had this lovely old woman come into the shop the other day and say ‘I’m so obsessed with wearing my Wednesday pants on a Wednesday, I get so angry with my cleaner when she takes the wrong pair. So I had to come and buy five sets’.”

Much like that auld wan, the Fortescue girls emit an out of touch charm, dispensing comments that convey their privilege without meaning to offend, like a slightly racist grand aunt who is just too long in the tooth to change.

And me and my viewing habits.