by Joyce Marcel, Vermont Business Magazine
You’re reading an unusual story for Vermont Business Magazine — one that begins with a mostly naked pop star.
In June of 2014, the pop singer Rihanna was presented with a style icon award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). The dress she wore became an internet sensation around the world; the fashion magazine Elle described it this way: “In an Adam Selman gown made out of 230,000 Swarovski crystals and zero slips, Rihanna was basically naked on the red carpet.”
As bare as she was, if you look closely you’ll see that under her sheer and sparkly dress Rihanna is wearing a tiny thong. A tiny thong that was made by a lingerie company called Commando LLC, which happens to be located in South Burlington, Vermont. It gives a whole new meaning to the term “Made in Vermont.”
The thong’s designer is the CEO and co-founder (with her husband, Edward Biggins) of Commando, native Vermonter Kerry O’Brien, 44.
O’Brien is on the board of the CFDA — a prestigious honor in itself. And she happened to be at the party where Rihanna wore the famous crystal dress.
“You know what makes that story better for me personally?” she said. “So many celebrities wear our underwear, and we knew that Rihanna loves our underwear. But when she walked in, she was like — oh my God! — she was like Tinkerbell. She sparkled everywhere. It was beautiful. And underneath the sparkles you could see she was wearing underwear and I was thrilled. It was a testament to our underwear.”
The list of celebrities who wear Commando is long and includes not only Rihanna but Jennifer Lopez, Reese Witherspoon, Julianne Moore, Olivia Wilde and Amy Poehler. That’s because Its products are beloved by the stylists who dress them — no visible panty line is essential when your client is walking the red carpet.
Fashion designers in New York and Paris also love Commando products for their comfort as well as for their invisibility. New York designer Jason Wu told More Magazine they’re “like skin.”
Commando products have been featured in Vogue, Redbook, More, Us, Women's Wear Daily, InStyle and many more publications. O’Brien has been profiled in The New York Times under the headline “What lies beneath that Oscars Outfit?”
But Commando’s undergarments are not only for celebrities and fashion models. While a visible panty-line isn’t much of a problem for either sex if they wear Carhartt’s to work, finding comfortable undergarments is close to a universal problem for women.
That is what inspired O’Brien to create Commandos.
“I wanted more from my top drawer,” O’Brien explained. “I like to say I’m an educated consumer, but I could not find what I wanted. Why is there underwear that I don’t completely love wearing every single day? I felt like my underwear always fought with my body. It either pinched or squeezed or showed panty lines or whatever. I decided to challenge the norm.”
So in 2005, O’Brien created the first line of “raw cut” women’s underwear — only the crotch has seams — made out of special, high-tech, ultra-smooth and soft “microfiber” fabrics that cling to the body without cutting into it or fraying because they are not seamed. No elastic around the waist or legs. No trim. No bulges. No lines visible under the dress. You don’t even know it’s there. O’Brien sources these proprietary, stretchy, whisper-soft textiles from Europe.
In the pop culture world, the word “commando” usually means that a man or a woman is going without underwear. That’s why Commando’s motto is “Better than nothing.”
Why is such an innovative, high-fashion, celebrity-attracting, pioneering luxury lingerie company located in South Burlington?
“We’re in Vermont for one very simple reason: it’s because we want to live here,” O’Brien said. “That’s it. My family is here. I love the quality of living here. There are a lot of creative people here who choose to live here because of the lifestyle. It does not make sense that our company is based in South Burlington, Vermont. It should be based in New York City or maybe L.A. But probably it should be in New York, and in fact I’m in New York often. But I’m a Vermonter.”
Remember, Vermont has been a leader in women’s undergarments once before, in 1977 when Jogbra was developed here. And as it turns out, O’Brien once did an internship at Jogbra. But Commando exists a long way away from the sports arena. Its products are high-end luxury items designed for beauty, softness, invisibility and, above all, comfort. They’re not mass market and you won’t find them at Wal-Mart. Prices start at around $25 for a bikini panty.
O’Brien and Biggins run their privately-held company together. O’Brien, who has a degree in business and enjoyed a high-flying career as a financial publicist in New York before coming back to Vermont, is the creative force. Biggins, whose background is in finance, is the CFO. The couple met on a blind date in New York in 1997, married in 1999, live in Shelburne and have three children.
In person, O’Brien is a walking advertisement for the Commando woman. She is tall, dynamic, curly-haired and vivacious. She seems to have unlimited energy and talks at jack-hammer speed. When she laughs, which is often, her perfect white teeth are dazzling. On the day I met her, she was elegantly dressed in a well-fitting sleeveless purple Black Halo dress that allowed for plenty of cleavage. She had added black Commando textured tights and shiny black boots with four inch stiletto heels.
We were speaking at a long conference table on the mezzanine of Commando world headquarters — a large industrial space carved out of a Butler building that features exposed black steel crossbeams and thick white pipes. O’Brien designed the space herself; she calls it “industrial chic.” Behind us was a large inspirational “mood board” holding colorful cutouts of flowers and clothes.
Through high windows I could see a large shipping department behind and below us. Under the mezzanine is office space and, to the side, a design room filled with cutting tables and tubes of fabric. New styles are designed and created there. Approximately 45 people work for the company, which contracts out its manufacturing — although all the products are made in the US — but handles quality control and shipping in-house.
Commando sells to major department stores — Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales, and Neiman Marcus among them — as well as to about 1,000 boutique women’s apparel shops. Through the upscale online fashion store Net-A-Porter and other online places, it ships worldwide. It also sells through its own website at wearcommando.com.
According to Women's Wear Daily, the US hosiery industry is a $7.3 billion market. Because O’Brien is extremely secretive about revenue figures, it is difficult to learn exactly how much of this market Commando pulls in.
“I love the fact that we’re a private company and we don’t need to talk about finances,” she said. “I love the fact that it doesn’t matter. Everyone wonders how big everyone else is, and it’s just something we don’t talk about.”
However, according to More Magazine, Commando reached $1 million its first year and, except for the worst of the 2008 crash, has experienced annual double-digit growth ever since. O’Brien is willing to confirm that sales have grown each year of the company’s existence.
There is no plan to look for investors or to take the company public.
“Right now we’re very happy to be private,” O’Brien says. “It’s my husband and myself and that feels right.”
One of O’Brien’s closest friends, Michelle Cote, vice president of data and insights at MyWebGrocer, says that the designer brings a positive attitude and zest to her work.
“Things are never boring when Kerry is around,” she said.
“Kerry is incredibly creative and also — very much so — practical and a problem solver,” Cote said. “She’s someone who always looked at how things fit or how products were used, and ‘Wow! Wouldn’t it be better if...’ Fundamentally, I think she’s always enjoyed fashion and getting dressed up and feeling great about how you looked. It was very natural that she landed somewhere on that intersection of fashion confidence and creating better products than those that existed at the time.”
Although O’Brien’s Vermont market is tiny, one dress shop in Burlington, Expressions, is a huge fan.
“Kerry wanted to improve the products in the lingerie business, and she really did, God bless her,” said store owner Lorre Tucker. “The slip is like no other that we have ever tried. The pantyhose are fabulous, and I’ve tried a lot of companies over the years. I have other things in my closet that I should throw in the garbage — because I always go to her slip, her tank top and her pantyhose. They are comfortable and they function better than any other product I’ve tried. I feel confident selling them. And after 36 years of business, probably one of the most important things to me is selling a product I can stand behind.”
O’Brien never stops innovating. She has found ways to print pictures of colorful flowers or Parisian lace onto fabric to make colorful bras, tops and panties. In the spring/summer 2016 catalog, the thongs come with tigers, roses or peacocks printed on the crotch.
Commando also makes sleepwear, tights, slips with a patented weighted hem, stockings both sheer and sexy and pantyhose in sheer black and patterns. It sells “matchsticks,” or double-stick tape strips that keep a woman’s breasts from falling out of revealing evening gowns. It makes leotards. It makes a line of “shapewear,” or garments that can hold in a stomach or reshape a butt. It sells both one-time-use nipple concealers (five pairs per package) and reusable silicone nipple concealers (also available in non-adhesive.) O’Brien tried making reversible swimwear for a while — two bathing suits made it onto a “Today” show segment with Hoda and Kathie Lee — but discontinued it.
Attorney Peter Kunin, a trademark specialist and deputy managing partner at Downs Rachlin Martin, has worked with the company on international trademark protection. He thinks Vermont is lucky to have Commando here.
“I first met Kerry and Ed almost 10 years ago, when they were running their business out of the basement of their home in Shelburne,” Kunin said. “Kerry had just recently moved back home from New York City. Since that time, I’ve seen them pour a huge amount of enthusiasm and energy in building their business here in Vermont. They work seamlessly as a team. It’s a 24/7 job.”
O’Brien is a groundbreaking force in the women’s apparel industry, Kunin said.
“She’s innovative, she’s creative and she and Ed together are incredibly dedicated to their business and their employees,” he said. “Commando proves that Vermont is more than beer and cheese and maple syrup.”
Early Life
O’Brien’s roots in Vermont run deep and wide. On her father’s side she is a fourth-generation South Burlingtonian. On her mother’s side, she is a third-generation Vermonter. She comes from a large family; she has two older sisters and a younger sister and brother. O’Brien’s father, Daniel John O’Brien, started out as a cattle dealer, then evolved into a real estate developer. He is a founder and principal in O’Brien Brothers Agency. Commando headquarters are located in one of his buildings.
“My father is obviously Irish,” O‘Brien said. “I did not take my married name because I love the O’Brien name so much. My mother is Lebanese and a second-generation Vermonter. There’s a pretty significant Lebanese community in the area.”
She calls her mother “the role model in so many ways.”
“She’s what every woman wants to be,” she said, “She’s gracious, a wonderful mother and a great wife. It’s always about family. Sunday was family day. You don’t make other plans for Sundays. All the cousins would come over and we’d have big dinners. We still do that today.”
Among the lessons Dan O’Brien taught his daughter must have been a reluctance to talk about the business side of business.
“My father is a very low-keyed man, very conservative,” she said. “When you ask him how business is doing, he’ll never ever tell you in a million years that business is good. Ever! But he was a hard worker. He took a lot of pride in everything he did. He wanted to look back and be proud of what he did. He always wanted to be a member of a community. He had an entrepreneurial spirit. He took a lot of risks and that’s what I did. My parents raised us to honestly, truly believe that we could do anything. And he always said, ‘I want you to be financially independent.’ And that was in the 1970s.”
The O’Brien family was landed and the children grew up on a working farm.
“It was a lot of fun,” O’Brien said. “I used to run next door and ‘help’ the farmers. When I think back, I must have been the biggest nuisance ever. When I went to kindergarten, I told my mother, ‘I don’t know what they will do without me.’”
In high school O’Brien took advantage of an alternative learning program and eagerly completed several internships.
“I took advantage of so many opportunities,” she said. “I would cross the street and work at the city hall. I worked in the bookkeeping office, helping to file and doing data entry and whatever it was. That was a way for me to have real life work experience while I went to school. I don’t know if I got paid, but I may have gotten a small stipend. Next year Jogbra had an internship. I would go over to Williston during the school day and work in data processing there. “
Her first real paying job, when she was 14, was working for her father.
“My father started the SMK Lawn Care Corp.,” she said. “It stood for Stephanie, Molly and Kerry. And instead of paying outside people to mow lawns, he had us do it. We would mow his properties. We weren’t old enough to drive, so I would have to drive a lawn mower down the street to get to one of his properties, and I was so embarrassed.
We cleaned his office, too.”
She also worked at The Limited, where, she said, “I definitely got paid.”
O’Brien went to Bentley College (now called Bentley University) in Waltham, Mass., where she majored in business communications and minored in finance. But it was her real-world experience that prepared her for a life in business.
“I can’t encourage people enough to do internships,” O’Brien said. “I had the internship bug. I did one at U.S. Sen. Mitchell’s office in D.C., then the next summer I worked in the press office for the late (Secretary of Commerce) Ron Brown. The following summer I had internships for CNN and ABC News’ ‘Nightline.’ I got offered both and couldn’t decide, so I decided to do both. One was in the morning and one was at night. They were paying, but it still cost me more to live in New York than they were paying.”
Career Woman
After O’Brien graduated college, she went looking for her first real job in New York.
“I had an interview with HBO and they said, ‘Kerry you’re not right for this. There isn’t a career path here for you. But I think I know someone who could help you out,’” she said. “They picked up a phone and called Edelman Public Relations. I didn’t apply, nothing. It was one person helping out another, and by the end of the day I had a job. People often forget to ask, ‘Do you know someone who can help me?’ It’s a simple question.”
Edelman is a global public relations firm and O’Brien worked in their financial media division.
“It was the perfect beginning to my career and I loved it,” she said. “I loved reading newspapers and I loved watching the financial news. I started off as administrative assistant and by the time I was 24 or 25 I was a vice president and running my own accounts.”
From there she moved to the public relations firm Weber Shandwick, where she was senior vice president specializing in financial media. She quit the job the day after the 9/11 attacks.
“I had an amazing career,” O’Brien said. “But I was at home, just few blocks from the World Trade Center. I had clients in the World Trade Center. My job was to read the financial news, watch CNN and CNBC. I had my own Bloomberg terminal. I read four newspapers a day. And I could not watch the tragedy of 9/11 for news cycle after news cycle. I realized I was burnt out.”
After O’Brien left corporate life, she threw away all her sophisticated hosiery.
“I was in New York, so I opened the garbage chute and threw it all away,” she said. “I stayed in the city for a couple of years after I quit my job, but I had no idea I was going to end up in the hosiery business.”
Coming To Vermont
When they both happened to be at loose ends, O’Brien and Biggins moved to Vermont.
“I loved being in New York,” she said. “And we had many opportunities to return to New York and explore the world of finance for Ed. I asked him, ‘Am I hijacking you or do you want to be here?’ And he wholeheartedly wanted to be here and make this work and raise our family here and be close to my family.”
Looking for something to do, first O’Brien started writing books.
“The first book was about girls breaking up in relationships,” she said.
But she didn’t have much experience with the topic and couldn’t get an agent or a publisher.
“Then I started writing ‘Rack Management 101,’” she said. “Talk about taking a risk. It was all my advice about what to wear underneath under your clothes. I have three sisters and we’re always talking about fashion. The same with my friends. And I was discouraged about what they were wearing under their outfits. They would buy beautiful clothes and care about their makeup and shoes, and they’d show up with panty lines or not wearing the right bra. But again I couldn’t find an agent. Everyone said, ‘You don’t have a platform.’ So in the middle of writing it, I decided to start a company that made underwear.”
Her first product, in 2003, was called “Takeouts.” These were silicone gel bust enhancers packed in little white cartons that look like Chinese takeout. The Takeouts helped women boost their cleavage and the product caught on quickly. She and Biggins worked on the project together. And O’Brien discovered she had a talent for marketing.
“I went door to door,” she said. “I thought to myself, if I was to close my eyes, who would be a realistic ideal person who would bring on my product? I would go on line and see what other products they carried. And if I felt they were in the same vein, I would show up and try to sell my product.”
She got a big boost when a friend of a friend got her an appointment with the buyer at Henri Bendel’s New York.
“They were known for taking on new designers, and they took me on immediately,” she said. “And then I knew I had a viable product because this cool store in New York City was selling it. I knew I had a foothold and I could leverage that.”
Eventually Takeouts were being sold in about 600 stores from California to New York. O’Brien and Biggs call Takeouts their “Trojan Horse,” because they had taken something that was a secret — that women use bust enhancers — and turned it into a fashion accessory.
Still, Vermont was a long way from the glitz and glitter of the fashion world.
“The downside is that I have to travel more than I like,” O’Brien said. “If I was in New York I would be around more inspirational designers and I’d be involved in a lot more events specifically for designers and retail and the clothing industry. That would be nice. And a lot of fabric manufacturers have offices in New York. And there’s some garment construction that happens in New York that is untapped for us. I’d have more resources at my fingertips.”
Recruitment is also a problem.
“It’s not a natural place where people from my industry would come,” she said. “I’m hesitant to ask people to move here because honestly, I don’t think they understand how much longer the winters are. I can’t speak for Burton Snowboards, but if you have snowboard designers, they probably like the long winters. But intimate apparel designers? Probably not so much. Vermont is cold, the winters are long and it is expensive. If it becomes too difficult, we might want to reevaluate. And so many people don’t know we’re here. They may read this article and know there is a career in fashion in Vermont.”
O’Brien said that the state has reached out to her with offers of help.
“I know if I needed something specifically, I don’t feel that I would ignored,” she said.
O’Brien still feels she and Biggins made the right decision to come.
“Living in Vermont, the quality of life is very high,” she said. “My family is here, It’s a beautiful state. It has four beautiful seasons. I love the people here. I’m a Vermonter. It’s home.
No Visible Panty Line
In 2005 O’Brien and Biggins founded Commando.
“I was always focusing on what I want in my top drawer,” she said. “I really wanted to tackle comfortable underwear. Doesn’t everyone want a pair of comfortable underwear? It just happens that ours is invisible and doesn’t have a panty line. But I bet you if you were to ask the average Commando consumer why they wear our underwear, they would say comfort is the number one reason.
The thong is where it all started. Made out of a stretchy yet soft microfiber and cut so that it doesn’t need hemming or elastic, it is designed to fit like a glove and feel good against a woman’s skin.
“My friends call me the MacGyver of underwear,” O’Brien said, laughing. “I am designing for myself, and I do not want to sacrifice when it comes to fabric quality. Most fabrics have to be finished and edged. I seek out ones that don’t.”
Once O’Brien knew what she wanted, she started talking to fabric manufacturers in New York.
“I set up a few appointments and knocked on a few people’s doors,” O'Brien said. “I told them my idea, my concept — that I wanted to come up with underwear that didn’t have elastic or trim. For some reason, these people took a liking to me and decided they wanted to help me., They started making phone calls. By the end of the day, or maybe a day and a half, starting with only two appointments, I found a fabric manufacturer who could help me out. Together we put together a road map or how I could get to where I wanted to go.”
Stylists — the men and women who dress the stars — took to the thong immediately.
“In the first year we were probably sold in about 500 boutiques,” O’Brien said. “The stylists discovered it for their celebrity dressings. We’d have TV shows and movies asking us to FedEx. The list of celebrities who wear our stuff on a regular basis is so long — it’s almost every celebrity.”
On occasion, Commando does do celebrity gifting. However a number of
celebrities and stylists also purchase Commando for personal and professional use.
Fashion designers came next.
“The fashion designers want the focus to be on their beautiful designs, and they don’t want panty lines to be a distraction,” O’Brien said. “Probably about six or seven years ago, we started working with fashion designers for New York Fashion Week. We’d send them underwear. And I get to go to the shows, which is a lot of fun.”
Fashion Week became a collaboration between O’Brien and the designers. And a few years ago, when designers began creating evening clothes that were fully or partially sheer, Commando was right there to help them.
“So instead of calling in nude thongs and tiny thongs, they’re calling in black high rise panties,” O’Brien said. “They like Commando because it is so sleek on the body and so minimalist. They love the styling, and if they have to have underwear under their gorgeous designs, they want Commando.”
O’Brien doesn’t want to take credit for inspiring the sheer look, but she loves the clothing.
“I think that Commando is such a simple solution for them to dress in a beautiful chic way,” she said. “I do think they have been going to us for so many years that when they had the sheer look it was a natural for them to come to us. I think our underwear is beautiful on a woman’s body.”
Competition is fierce in retail fashion, and O’Brien talks about the industry as if it were a death cage match. She estimates that it only took six months before other companies were copying her designs.
“I have to say since the beginning there has been interpretations for nine and half years,” O’Brien said. “I don’t think anybody has come close to taking the care and having a product that compares to our quality and aesthetic. But this is retail, and you have to keep on innovating.”
O’Brien now holds two patents, one on the soft band that holds her hosiery up without elastic and another for the way she softly weighs down her wispy slips so that they don’t ride up.
“There hadn’t been a patent on a slip since 1950,” O’Brien said. “Who wears slips anymore? The last slip I wore was for a piano recital in seventh grade. I was banished to JC Penney’s. It was a granny slip. So when people asked me to design a slip, I wanted to develop a clean contemporary one. One of the things women were complaining about was pulling the slips down because they were always riding up. So we put weights on the sides of our slips. And we have one of the best-selling slips at our department stores now, based on that design. So I invented that. The patent is hanging somewhere. I don’t know where it is.”
It hasn’t always been an easy ride. While she was still developing her line, for example, she tried to make a line of conservative underwear for a conservative department store. It bombed.
“Before it was all nude underwear, and I decided I was going to do prints,” O’Brien said. “But I played it really safe. I had this really ugly paisley and I thought the department store would like this. I did it in brown, navy and white. Instead of showing my true personality, which would have been wild, crazy, innovative things, I held myself back. And they actually told me they could not stand them. That they looked like couch covers. And they did, now that I look back at it. You have to give them something to say no to. Let’s push the envelope and show them that we’re willing to go that far and willing to have fun. And I can never predict. The biggest failure is if you’re afraid to fail.”
Commandos should not be confused with Spanx, the well-known tight-fitting, stretchy, girdle-like foundation undergarments that have become a multi-billion-dollar brand. Commando emphasizes comfort over control. But it does have a “shape wear” line with light-to-medium compression that does really well, according to O’Brien. She said its motto is “smooth, not stuffed.”
“Commando is all about comfort,” O’Brien said. “Women should feel beautiful and fantastic in their underwear. If they’re even thinking about the underwear, they’re wearing the wrong underwear.”
Missing from the Commando line are large sizes for the plus-sized woman. But that might change if the future is innovation and more innovation.
“Everyone is looking to everyone for inspiration,” O’Brien said. “You can’t invent one thing and think you can build a business around it. Innovation is in our DNA here. It’s about our promise to our consumers. I feel every woman love every single piece of clothing they put on in the morning, from their underwear to their earrings to their dress to their shoes to their coat. And underwear can set the tone of the day. If you are uncomfortable, particularly in your underwear, it changes your mood and the way you feel about yourself. You should forget about your underwear. That’s why our Commando tag line is ‘Better than nothing.’”
Joyce Marcel is a journalist who lives in southern Vermont. She is currently writing a memoir covering six generations of her family caught in the sweep of history across the 20th Century. She is writing another book about Vermont businesses. More of her work appears at her Web site, joycemarcel.com.
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