About Our Founder - Carmeli

Inspired in Paris. Designed in Melbourne. Worn by women worldwide.

Some ideas are born in a boardroom. B Free was born during a nap time.

It was 2009. Elle Shoket Carmeli was on maternity leave with her newborn twins, her third and fourth children, and for the first time in fifteen years of a relentless fashion career, she had a moment to breathe. And to draw.

"While the babies slept, I finally had time to sketch the designs I had been imagining for years. A wire-free bra that actually supported. A nursing bra that did not feel like a punishment. Shapewear that understood what four pregnancies do to a body."

Those sketches became B Free.

INSPIRED IN PARIS

Elle's obsession with intimate apparel started long before motherhood. Growing up between Paris and Athens, she absorbed European culture from an early age — the art, the craft, the extraordinary French attention to detail.

In 1996 she enrolled at ESMOD Paris — one of the world's most prestigious fashion schools — graduating in 1999 with a specialisation in lingerie design. Walking Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore. Visiting the lace factories of legendary manufacturers like Desseilles. Volunteering backstage at Haute Couture shows — dressing models for Karl Lagerfeld and Jean Paul Gaultier — watching firsthand how the world's most extraordinary garments were brought to life.

"The challenge of creating something so small, so technical, so intimate — yet so deeply personal to the woman wearing it — captivated me completely."

WHERE THE TECHNOLOGY WAS BORN

After ESMOD, Elle went straight to the source. She joined world-leading seamless manufacturers in Europe and worked directly on Italian seamless circular machinery — learning the craft from the ground up.

This is where she learned everything. Seamless knitting. Bonded edge technology. Engineered support zones knitted directly into the fabric. No show lines. No seams. No compromise.

She presented these innovations to some of the world's biggest brands — Donna Karan, Victoria's Secret, Marks & Spencer and more — before a new opportunity called her to the other side of the world.

DESIGNED IN MELBOURNE

With her husband, her newborn daughter and fifteen years of international expertise, Elle moved to Melbourne to join Pacific Brands, one of Australia's largest apparel groups, where she rose to lead the design teams at iconic Australian brand Holeproof.

For almost seven years she honed her craft further. Real women. Real fit trials. Real feedback. The business of building product that actually works at scale.

After almost seven years at Pacific Brands, it was during a year of maternity leave that everything changed. Instead of going back to corporate, Elle chose to B Free. To have her own business. To design her own designs. To focus on seam-free, wire-free, tag-free, everything she believed intimate apparel should be. And so B Free began.

THE WIRE-FREE MOMENT

"As a designer, I had spent years presenting seasonal collections to retailers, always dressed up, always in a wire bra. It was just the routine. But on maternity leave, away from all of that, I finally asked myself, why? Why are we still doing this to women?"

Nursing bras with wires were another thing Elle simply could not stand. And after four pregnancies, shapewear that genuinely understood a post-maternity body felt not just desirable but necessary.

She already knew the technology existed. She had worked with it in Europe. She knew that seamless circular machinery could create bras without wires that truly supported, shapewear with targeted compression zones, nursing bras that were actually comfortable, all without seams, tags or compromise.

What she could not understand was why nobody had brought it properly to Australian women. In real sizes. For real bodies. At every real stage of life.

So from her home in Hawthorn East, Melbourne, with sketches drawn during nap times and fifteen years of world-class expertise, Elle Shoket Carmeli launched B Free Intimate Apparel.

WHY B FREE?

Starting over after a year at home with four children was one of the hardest things Elle had ever done. But it was also the most liberating. B Free was not just named for its seam-free, wire-free, tag-free technology; it was named for the feeling of choosing yourself. Of deciding that comfort, freedom and confidence were not things women should have to compromise on, in their underwear or in their lives.

If you have ever stood at the edge of returning to work after maternity leave, wondering who you are now and what comes next, Elle built this brand for you too. Because it is possible. You have everything you need. Your experience, your passion, your story, they are enough. Do not be afraid to get out there and show the world what you have to offer. Follow your passion. B Free.

B FREE TODAY

Seventeen years later, B Free has grown from those nap-time sketches into a brand trusted by hundreds of thousands of women across Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Japan and beyond.

Today B Free designs wire-free bras, seamless underwear, maternity and nursing intimates, shapewear, sleepwear and wardrobe solutions for every neckline, every occasion and every stage of life, from first bra to post-surgery, from pregnancy to the boardroom.

Every piece is made with minimal seams on circular machinery or with bonded technology. Every style is wear-tested on real women of all shapes, sizes and ages. Every design decision comes back to the same question Elle asked herself during those nap times in 2009: "Does this make a woman's life easier, more comfortable, more free?" If the answer is yes, it is B Free.

B Free is proud to serve women at every stage of life, young girls with developing bodies, women at home, working and travelling ladies, mothers and mothers-to-be, sportswomen, ladies post-surgery, disabled women, and women who need natural fibres for sensitive skin. Every woman. Every body. Every stage.

"Knowing that we are changing what it means to be a woman every day provides me with so much satisfaction. Hopefully, one day, no longer will any woman arrive home and feel that the first thing she must do is remove her bra."

FOR EVERY BODY

B Free is a brand for women, by women, and for every body in between. Whatever your size, age, shape or stage, you belong here.

Sizes 8A to 26H in Australia and New Zealand. Sizes 30A to 48H in the USA. Available worldwide.

Because freedom should fit everyone.

— Elle Shoket Carmeli, Founder and Director, B Free Intimate Apparel ESMOD Paris, 1999