Kilo Brava Founder Kristin Bear on Building the Brand & Fighting U.S. Tariffs

By ASI EFROSSome brands are built from business plans. Others are born from instinct, passion, and a leap into the unknown. Kristin Bear, founder and creative force behind Kilo Brava, belongs firmly to the latter. She shares her journey in the exclusive interview for Lingerie Briefs Magazine.

Founded in 2019, Kilo Brava has, in just a few short years, become one of the most visually distinctive and emotionally resonant names in intimate apparel celebrated for its romantic sleepwear, exquisite lingerie, custom prints and embroideries, and dreamlike photography. But behind the polished campaigns and beautifully crafted collections lies a story of extraordinary resilience: one woman’s path through career reinvention, motherhood, multiple cross-country moves, and a very public fight against the devastating impact of U.S. tariffs on small businesses. It is, in every sense, a modern founder’s story.

Before Kilo Brava, Kristin Bear’s life was already deeply rooted in fashion. A graduate of Fashion Institute of Technology, where she studied design, Bear began her career in New York working for large apparel companies, including private-label firms serving major retailers. Her early experience spanned ready-to-wear, dresses, knits, and wovens before an unexpected opportunity led her into intimate apparel, a category that would ultimately define her career. She later worked for companies including Oleg Cassini, Ariella Alpha International, and Cosabella, where she eventually rose to head of design.

After marriage, motherhood, and the increasing challenge of balancing the intense demands of corporate fashion with raising children, Kristin made a decision that would alter everything: she walked away from the safety of a well-paying full-time job.

With the encouragement of her husband, who believed in her long before she fully believed in herself, she took the leap. Kilo Brava was born not in a sleek studio, but in the garage of a rental home in rural Florida. At the time, Bear was pregnant with her second child.

She designed, developed, sourced factories, tested samples, and built the brand from scratch while expecting a baby. A week after giving birth, she launched the brand.

What followed was a rare and remarkable ascent. From a few initial orders placed between newborn naps, Kilo Brava steadily grew into a sought-after brand carried by wholesale partners across the country and featured by major retailers. As the business expanded, so did its physical footprint. The company moved from a garage to its first warehouse and design office in Colorado, and later to Sarasota, Florida, where Bear and her family eventually settled.

There, another organic evolution took place. What was initially intended to be simply a warehouse and office became something more. Kristin found a commercial space near Sarasota’s bustling retail corridor and transformed it into a hybrid concept: a storefront in the front and the operational heart of the business in the back.

The store, Bambola, now houses Kilo Brava’s collections alongside carefully curated women-owned brands, while behind the scenes the warehouse manages importing, fulfillment, and wholesale distribution.

If the first chapter of Kilo Brava’s story is about creation, the second is about resistance.

In 2025, Kristin found herself at the center of a national economic and legal fight over U.S. tariffs imposed on Chinese imports. For a business like Kilo Brava, whose production depends on highly specialized Chinese factories, the tariffs were not an abstract political issue. They were existential.

Design cycles in intimate apparel are planned far in advance. Fabrics, trims, underwires, lace, embroidery techniques, and specialized construction all rely on long-standing factory relationships and machinery not readily available in the United States. As she explained, the suggestion to simply “make it in America” was not only unrealistic, it fundamentally misunderstood how apparel manufacturing works. The infrastructure, skilled labor, machinery, and supply chains necessary for this level of intimate apparel production no longer exist at scale domestically. Even if rebuilding were possible, it would take years, not weeks.

Faced with what she believed was an illegal and devastating policy, Kristin refused to remain silent. For her, the implications were immediate and deeply personal. Instead, she did what founders do best: she acted. The next day after the announcement, Kristin was contacting media outlets, legal organizations, and government offices, determined to tell the truth about who actually pays tariffs. Not China, but American business owners, small brands, founders, families, and entrepreneurs who built businesses from nothing.

Her determination led her to become one of the first plaintiffs in a major legal challenge against the tariffs. The case became a landmark example of small businesses pushing back against policy decisions that threatened their survival.

For Kristin, however, the fight was never about politics; it was about principle, it was about right and wrong, it was about protecting not only her own livelihood, but the livelihoods of countless other small brands facing the same threat. That clarity of purpose is perhaps what defines Kristin Bear most.

She harbors an incredible drive, but it does not appear to come from ambition alone. It comes from gratitude, creativity, motherhood, and a desire to live fully and courageously. In many ways, Kilo Brava is an extension of that philosophy.

The collections feel deeply personal,  nostalgic yet modern, sensual yet approachable, luxurious yet emotionally warm. Each piece carries the unmistakable signature of a founder who designs from lived experience.

Today, Kilo Brava stands as more than a successful brand. It is a testament to what happens when talent meets courage, a garage-born dream, a mother’s leap of faith, a designer’s vision, and a founder’s refusal to back down. And perhaps most beautifully, a reminder that some of the most extraordinary businesses are built not from certainty, but from the willingness to begin anyway.

If you are ready to speak the expressive language of Kilo Brava or resonate with the ethos of the brand, visit their website https://kilobrava.com/, find them on Instagram @kilobrava, or simply stop by Bambola, their store in Sarasota, Florida.

Contact:

Kristin Bear, Founder of Kilo Brava

Website: www.kilobrava.com

Instagram: @kilobrava

Email: hello@kilobrava.com

Listen and Read More Interviews in the Intimate Talks Feature on Lingerie Briefs