A Little About The Project
For a while we had thrown around the idea for a ftm/masculine-of-center swim top. Years of personal experience struggling to find an appropriate top to wear while swimming, along with seeing others face the same lack of options, inspired us to create a new apparel option.
In November of 2015 we launched our Kickstarter for the Bareskin Top -- an inclusive nude colored binder that included a range of skin-tones, something that hadn’t been done before. Thanks to 766 backers, we successfully funded our project through Kickstarter in December 2015 (making this the second most funded trans-related project in Kickstarter at the time) and began selling en masse in October of 2016. Through our kickstarter backers, we gathered feedback from our community about color, sizing, and fit preferences — resulting in over 700 individual data points that informed our first prototype. In addition to those backers’ input, we created our binder with over 20 years of combined binder-wearing experience.
The result was the Bareskin Binder. We combined the silhouette of a traditional half binder and a compression sports bra to create a comfortable compression top. We offer this top in a range of neutral skin tones that can be worn while swimming and styled to create a more shirtless appearance. Our Bareskin Binder is designed to be worn as an everyday compression top, not just for swimming or warm-weather use.
Our binder was the first nude range available and the first racerback — 2 innovations that forced the market, in general, to become more inclusive, especially for people of color who were not included in “skin tone” binder options at the time. Though our binder was launched at the end of 2016, we have already made 2 silhouette changes and changed manufacturers all based on customer feedback in the past 8.5 years and plan to continue to improve along the way!
As of 2025, our production is done through a domestic woman-run manufacturing team here in Austin that specializes in sportswear and performance garments. We've always been about supporting local, small, women, and minorities so working with our manufacturer was a no-brainer.
