Many years ago, long before Grail, I bought a pair of cute cotton hipster panties from Target. Little did I know that they were hiding an ugly secret.

They had seams running straight across the inside of the gusset. Y’know, the part that sits directly against a very sensitive area of the body. Surely, this must be a cardinal sin of underwear.

Even without this personal experience, (which isn’t my only run-in with unfortunate undergarments), I have a deep-seated disdain for bras, panties, and lingerie that prioritize the appearance of the outside of underwear over the comfort & functionality of the inside. It’s UNDERWEAR. It is in direct physical contact with your skin for many hours per wearing. Even for individuals without pronounced sensory issues, rough edges, scratchy materials, and pokey bits are unfriendly when pressed against the body for prolonged periods of time. There’s just no excuse for designers to take such care with presenting a fashionable exterior when the part that actually touches your sensitive areas is a textural nightmare.

Examples include: a flat outer seam that forms a rough-edged ridge on the inside.

This boning has ends that are anchored into padding on the outside, presumably for smoothness, but the tip is free-floating and pointy on the reverse side.

Sometimes entire garments are extremely rough on the inner surfaces.

It’s never a great thing when fashion overrides function, but some of these design choices really compromise the wearability of bras and panties. Rest assured, when the Grail team is making decisions about which products to bring into the shop, we’re checking them out from every angle. It’s not that aesthetics don’t matter; we just understand that how things feel can’t be overshadowed by appearances.