Panty raid

Helene Morris and Aimee McFarlane from fashion label Lonely Hearts. Photo / Glenn Jeffre

Words like awkward or ugly-cool could make more emotionally fragile designers freak, but for the Lonely Hearts team these sort of descriptions are to be embraced. They see themselves as the underdog, Pretty in Pink's Duckie in a sea of Blanes. It's true that they do somehow seem removed from the industry that they're part of. I rarely see them at fashion parties. Their clothes always feature in magazines but you hardly ever read anything about them. Their faces are hardly ever seen in the social pages. Their pop culture references are always unexpected and more importantly completely free of ironic hipness or pretension, from zombie films to Winona Ryder's Lydia Deetz to Courtney Love before she lost the plot. For the Lonely Hearts team it's simple: "we just want to concentrate on making cool clothes".

Aimee McFarlane, Helene Morris and Steve Ferguson launched Lonely Hearts in 2003 (they were originally called Lonely Hearts Club but dropped the club in 2007), after bonding over a shared love of clothes while snowboarding in Colorado. They soon moved back to Wellington and began producing bags and printed T-shirts and other streetwear-inspired garments.

"When we first started we didn't have any idea that it was going to move so quickly," says McFarlane, who studied fashion while Morris did graphic design. They decided to show their first full collection at Air New Zealand Fashion Week as part of the Verge Breakthrough show in 2005, a collection that featured cute and kooky Popeye the Sailor and fish and chip prints. It got them noticed by many within the industry, stylist and photographer Karen Inderbitzen-Waller was one of them. Inderbitzen-Waller has worked with the Lonely Hearts team each season since 2006, and says she was initially drawn towards their "their mad, similar sense of humour".

"I'm always inspired by how hard they work, how much fun they have and most of all how refreshing and clever they are".

The Lonely Hearts label has grown fast since that first collection, with a maturing aesthetic, a move to Auckland and the opening of their flagship store, Myhart. And now they are diversifying with a new lingerie collection, Lonely by Lonely Hearts. It is beautiful, made in New Zealand, and more importantly, interesting; the sort of lingerie made to be worn while lazing about prettily on fresh white sheets, perfectly captured in the campaign images. Lingerie elements have frequently appeared in Lonely Hearts ranges, so designing a full collection was a natural progression for the team who had been looking to add something new to their brand.

"I think it was also realising that the underwear that we love isn't necessarily being represented in the market," says Morris. "There's so much of a certain kind of underwear, but we do have a different look. The soft cup that we've done for our first range isn't hugely represented." And even though the reaction to the range has been fantastic, they're typically humble about it all. "We're not trying to reinvent the wheel, we're just doing really cool underwear for cool girls who like our style," says Ferguson.

Lonely by Lonely Hearts will be available in September.