This New Lingerie Line Promises To Adjust To Your Body Temperature

What if your bra could actually regulate your body temperature? Giapenta, a new lingerie and loungewear brand that just launched on Kickstarter today, is promising to do just that. Utilizing a proprietary technology dubbed TempPro, the Miami-based brand aims to bring the type of innovation that’s already been found in other categories, like activewear, to lingerie. The brand was thought up by Kris Strouthopoulos, Giapenta’s founder and CEO, who recruited her sister, Elena Strouthopoulos, as VP of marketing at the brand. Kris’ background is in retail sales and leadership at the likes of Sterling Jewelers and Sleep Number. (She got experience working with temperature-balancing materials and fabrics at the latter.) As for Elena, she’s spent time at Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom as a brand specialist and sales trainer. While working at Sleep Number, Kris noticed customers “could not get enough of this fabric, especially women, who would continuously tell me their personal stories of how life-changing this technology was for them. I thought, if they were getting such an amazing benefit from this material all night long, why not get the same benefits during the day?” She wanted to find a way to employ the same sort of technology in lingerie, “the first and most important layer in a woman’s wardrobe,” and spent six months doing industry research to make it happen. In total, the Strouthopoulos sisters have spent two years working on the development processwith a factory “whose extreme attention to detail and quality matched our own” to make TempPro, which Kris calls “a gamechanger for luxury lingerie,” a reality. Besides body heat-perceptive bedding, plenty of innovative textiles have been used in activewear, Kris notes, but “high-performance tech fabrics shouldn't just be reserved for the clothes you wear to the gym or the sheets you sleep on.” And while Giapenta pieces are moisture-wicking, as has become par for the course with activewear, that’s a reactive fabric quality — the brand’s TempPro technology makes for a proactive fabric: “just as you start to get warm, the phase-changing materials in the fabric proactively pull heat away from your body, so overheating and sweating are reduced,” Kris explained. “When you get cold, stored heat is released back to you, when you need it the most.” It’s even good enough to don in outer space, theoretically: “TempPro utilizes phase-change materials which were originally designed for NASA spacesuits, to accommodate extreme fluctuations in temperature that astronauts experience in space. While the duo doesn’t have any formal fashion design experience between them, that’s actually been a “huge competitive advantage,” Kris explained: “We continue to ask questions and push the limits in the design process, while always having our client’s needs at the heart of every decision that we make,” she said. “We are laser-focused on building a brand that delivers on meeting and exceeding our customer’s expectations at every level.” There’s a nod to the sisters’ Greek lineage in both the design — a signature Santorini-inspired blue hue threaded throughout — and the name, which derives from the Greek word for “forever.” As for the sisters’ objective with Giapenta? “To revitalize the intimate apparel industry with technology and smart designs,” according to Kris. “We want women to raise their expectations when it comes to their intimates.”