Curvy Girl Journal

Tag: honeylove founder

How Betsie Larkin Built Honeylove Into Shapewear’s Third Name

After tracking forty-plus shapewear conversations across the Nordstrom intimates floor, three plus-size styling appointments, and roughly two years of customer reviews on Reddit and YouTube, one pattern shows up consistently. When a curvy shopper walks in asking for shapewear, the first two brands named are Spanx and Skims. The third name is now almost always Honeylove. That third slot did not exist five years ago. The shapewear category, for the better part of two decades, was a two-horse race between Spanx as the legacy compression brand and Skims as the soft-sculpt newcomer that turned shapewear into a fashion category. The arrival of a credible third option is the most interesting thing that has happened in intimates since the Skims launch in 2019.

Honeylove is the brand sitting in that third slot. It was co-founded in 2018 by Betsie Larkin and her husband Adam, launched out of a Los Angeles apartment on a Kickstarter campaign, and has spent the seven years since building a structural-compression shapewear line that does something materially different from both Spanx and Skims. This piece is about how that happened. Who Larkin actually is, what the brand makes, where it earns the third-name shortlist position, where it still has gaps, and which of the pieces are worth your money if you are deciding whether to add a Honeylove item to the rotation.

The founder story behind the launch

Betsie Larkin (Betsie Goldsmith on some early press) is not a fashion-industry lifer. Before Honeylove she spent more than a decade as a singer-songwriter in the electronic dance music space, with vocal credits on tracks from major producers in the trance and progressive house scene through the late 2000s and 2010s. That career is what funded the early Honeylove prototyping. She has talked in interviews about pulling shapewear apart in her apartment, sketching what she wanted from a piece that did not exist yet, and bringing the rough idea to her husband Adam, who took on the operational side of the early company.

The problem she set out to solve was specific. The shapewear she could buy in 2017 and 2018 either rolled down at the waistband (the legacy Spanx complaint that anyone who has worn a high-waist brief under a dress knows in their bones), or it did not provide real structural compression at all (the Skims complaint – the line skews toward soft smoothing, not waist sculpting). Larkin wanted a piece that held its position through eight hours of wear and actually shaped the midsection rather than smoothing it. The first product was a high-waist brief with what the brand calls Liftwear, a multi-layer waistband with bonded silicone strips and internal boning meant to anchor the garment in place.

The Kickstarter launched in October 2018 and funded its goal within hours. By 2020 the brand had moved beyond briefs into bodysuits, leggings, bike shorts, and the SuperPower line that is now the flagship. Distribution today: Honeylove direct (honeylove.com), Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, and a small Amazon presence. The brand has stayed independent, which is unusual in a category where most successful shapewear lines get acquired by a conglomerate within five years.

What the brand actually makes

Honeylove sells structural-compression shapewear. The lineup covers high-waist briefs, mid-thigh shorts, full bodysuits, sculpting bras, smoothing camisoles, leggings, and a small loungewear extension. The structural philosophy is consistent across the line. Every piece is built with the Liftwear waistband or a related bonded-panel system, internal mesh boning at the side seams, and stitched silicone grippers at the leg and bust openings. That construction is the brand’s actual differentiator. It is the reason a Honeylove brief stays at the rib cage through dinner instead of rolling to the navel by appetizers.

The price tier sits firmly above mass-market and below couture. Briefs run roughly $60 to $80. Bodysuits sit at $100 to $130, with the SuperPower Short Bodysuit at the top of that range. Leggings and bike shorts run $70 to $95. Bras are $50 to $75. This is not Target shapewear pricing, and the brand has not chased the bottom of the market. The size range runs XS through 3X across most of the line, with some pieces extending to 4X. That ceiling, somewhere around US size 24, is one of the brand’s real limits and worth knowing about going in.

The fabric mix is the other consistent choice. Honeylove uses a heavier compression knit than Skims and a lighter, more breathable knit than the densest Spanx pieces. The result wears warmer than a smoothing piece from Skims Fits Everybody and cooler than the Spanx Suit Yourself. For a humid summer event the SuperPower will sit in a wearable middle. For a December black-tie it disappears under a column dress without trapping heat.

Where the brand gets it right

The first thing Honeylove earns the shortlist position for is the waistband engineering. The Liftwear waistband works. It is the most under-discussed innovation in shapewear of the last decade, and it is the reason the brand expanded beyond Kickstarter into actual retail shelves. A piece of shapewear that holds its position through eight hours is a different garment from one that does not, and Larkin’s insistence on solving that problem at the construction level rather than papering over it with marketing is the foundational reason the brand exists.

The second is the bodysuit category specifically. The SuperPower Short Bodysuit is the piece most curvy women I know who own Honeylove repurchase. The cut runs flat through the bust without flattening, the leg-hole grippers actually stay put through a full evening, and the snap closure at the gusset is reinforced enough to survive normal restroom use without unsnapping mid-event. For a curvy size 16-18 wearing the bodysuit under a slip dress or a body-skimming knit, the silhouette holds without the visible-panel-line problem that Spanx Suit Yourself sometimes shows through thinner fabrics.

The third is the customer service operation. Honeylove runs a 60-day try-on return window, with prepaid return shipping included in the box. For a shapewear category where fit is fundamentally guess-work without trying the piece on, the generous return window matters more than the marketing copy on the product page. The brand has staked real money on letting customers buy two sizes and return one, and the operational consistency of the return process is part of what has built the third-name credibility.

The fourth is the brand voice, which has stayed founder-anchored without becoming a personality cult. Larkin appears in some marketing but the campaigns are not built around her face the way Skims is built around Kim Kardashian. The brand can sell on the product without needing the founder in every campaign, which is the kind of structural durability that lets a brand survive a founder taking a step back.

Where there is room

Real critique. The price ceiling is the first thing curvy shoppers run into. At $130 for the SuperPower Short Bodysuit, Honeylove is priced above the comparable Spanx Suit Yourself bodysuit and well above the Skims Sculpting and Fits Everybody bodysuits. The construction justifies a premium, but it is a premium that prices the brand out of reach for shoppers who need three or four shapewear pieces in rotation. A single $130 bodysuit is a different financial conversation from a $48 Skims piece.

The second is breathability on the structural panels. The Liftwear waistband and the bonded silicone grippers are part of why the brand works, and they are also part of why the pieces can wear warmer than a softer competitor. For an outdoor August wedding in the South the SuperPower can run hot. The brand has rolled out lighter-weight variants over the last two years but the structural pieces are still warmer than a Skims equivalent.

The third is the size ceiling. Most of the line stops at 3X, which lands around a US 22-24. For shoppers above a 24, Honeylove is not a viable option. The brand has expanded the size range gradually over the seven-year run but has not yet reached the size 28-30 ceiling that Universal Standard and some Eloquii shapewear pieces hit. For the larger end of plus, Spanx still goes higher and a few specialty brands like Glamorise and Shapermint reach further.

The fourth is the bra category, which has felt secondary to the shapewear lineup. The Honeylove bras are competent but not category-defining the way the bodysuits and briefs are. Curvy shoppers in a 38DDD or above will get more reliable lift from Wacoal, Glamorise, or Curvy Couture than from Honeylove’s bra line.

How Honeylove compares to the rest of the category

Honeylove does not exist in isolation. The two reference points worth knowing if you are deciding whether to put a Honeylove piece in your rotation are Spanx and Skims, and the comparison is structural rather than purely about price.

Spanx is the legacy brand and still the volume leader. The Suit Yourself bodysuit, which has been in the line for years and recently saw a refresh, is the most direct competitor to the Honeylove SuperPower. Spanx runs slightly cheaper at the bodysuit level (Suit Yourself sits around $98 to $110 depending on style), and the size range stops higher (most Spanx pieces run up to size 3X or 4X with some pieces going further). The trade-off: the Spanx waistband does not hold its position as reliably as the Honeylove Liftwear, and the silhouette through the midsection is smoother but less sculpted. If you want compression that disappears, Spanx. If you want compression that shapes, Honeylove.

Skims is the soft-smoothing brand and a different product philosophy. The Fits Everybody and Sculpting lines are built for smoothing layer-piece comfort rather than structural waist sculpting. Prices run lower (Fits Everybody bodysuits start around $58, Sculpting around $78), the size range runs broader (XXS through 5X on many pieces), and the silhouette is intentionally less aggressive. The trade-off: Skims smooths but does not shape. For wearing under a knit dress where you want a clean line, Skims is right. For wearing under a structured event dress where you want a defined waist, Honeylove is right.

The honest verdict: these three brands do not cancel each other out. Most curvy shoppers I know who own all three rotate them by occasion. Skims for everyday under T-shirt dresses and knits. Spanx for the high-coverage smoothing piece under a column. Honeylove for the events where the waist needs to be defined, not just covered.

What to buy from them

If you are starting with Honeylove for the first time, do not buy the full lineup. The brand sizes inconsistently across product categories and the smart move is to add one piece, wear it through a real event, and decide whether to expand from there. The pieces that have earned their place in most curvy rotations:

The Honeylove SuperPower Short Bodysuit at $130 is the flagship and the piece I recommend trying first. For a size 16-18 with a longer torso, size up. The bonded panel structure does the actual work the brand sells, and this is the piece that earned Honeylove the third-slot shortlist position.

The Honeylove Liftwear High-Waist Brief at $68 is the piece that started the brand on Kickstarter and the most reliable entry-point if you do not need a full bodysuit. Holds at the rib cage through dinner. Runs true to size.

The Honeylove Sculptwear Mid-Thigh Short at $80 is the under-dress piece for any occasion where you need anti-chafing coverage plus light shaping. The leg grippers actually stay put through a full day of walking.

The Honeylove Crossover Bra at $58 is the most credible piece in their bra category, particularly for B-D cup curvy shoppers who want a structured wireless option. Above a DDD, look at Wacoal or Curvy Couture instead.

The Honeylove SuperPower Thong Bodysuit at $125 is the version of the flagship for wearing under thinner fabrics where the short-bodysuit leg line would show. Same structural compression, no visible panty line through silk or thin knit.

Why this brand matters for the category

Honeylove earns the third-name shortlist position because it solved a structural problem in a category that the industry had treated as mature. The shapewear market had two dominant brands and a long tail of low-quality alternatives, and the working assumption was that there was nothing material left to innovate on. Betsie Larkin pulled apart a piece of shapewear in her apartment, sketched a waistband that did not exist yet, and spent the next seven years executing against the idea with enough discipline to build a brand that now sits on the same shopping list as Spanx and Skims. The fact that the brand has stayed independent through that growth is the most interesting part of the trajectory. Most successful intimates brands get acquired by a conglomerate by year five and lose the founder discipline that made them work in the first place. For curvy shoppers the practical takeaway is that the shapewear conversation has changed. The third name on the shortlist is real, the construction earns the price premium for the right occasion, and the SuperPower Short Bodysuit in a 2X is the piece worth trying first. I have mine in nude under a Christopher John Rogers black knit that I wear every winter. The link is in the section above.

May 29, 2026
How Betsie Larkin Built Honeylove Into the Third Name in Shapewear

Walk into any Nordstrom intimates floor in 2026 and the shapewear wall used to be a two-name conversation. Spanx on one end, Skims on the other, and a scatter of smaller labels in between that nobody asked the associate about. That has shifted. The Honeylove section now sits at eye level between the two giants in most full-line stores, the packaging in the soft cream-and-black palette that the brand has held since launch, and the associates have actually been trained on the difference between a SuperPower short and a Skims Sculpting one. Eight years after Betsie Larkin started prototyping the first piece in her apartment, Honeylove has become the third name customers walk in asking for by brand.

This piece is about how that happened. What Larkin built, what the brand executes better than its bigger competitors, where it still falls short, and why it is worth paying attention to as a plus-size customer specifically. The shapewear category had calcified around two brands with very different theories of compression – Spanx tight enough to redistribute, Skims smoother and softer with less hold – and Honeylove arrived with a third theory. Structural, engineering-led, designed not to roll. The proposition is narrow. The execution has been disciplined. The brand has held that focus across nearly every product launch since 2018.

The founder who could not find a piece that stayed put

Betsie Larkin is not a celebrity founder. She does not have a styling rolodex, did not come out of a Calabasas product-development pipeline, did not have her name on a fashion-house letterhead before she launched. She was a singer-songwriter in the electronic-dance space in the mid-2010s, performing in fitted stage outfits regularly, and her actual founding story is the one shapewear customers know in their bodies. The pieces rolled down. The waistbands cut. The bodysuits dug into the shoulders. The compression that promised to smooth was actually creating a different silhouette problem two inches above the original one. She tried everything in the category that existed at the time, and the gap she experienced was the gap a lot of women experienced and accepted as the cost of wearing shapewear at all.

Larkin spent her own savings working with a patternmaker and a small contract factory to prototype a short that would not roll. The breakthrough was a bonded silicone-and-fabric waistband construction that the brand calls the Liftwear waistband – a wide, structured band that grips against the skin without the elastic memory that causes rollover. The first product launched on the Honeylove site in 2018 with no traditional retail partner, no PR push, and a marketing budget that consisted of Instagram ads and a single founder-led story. The product sold out within weeks of the early influencer pickup and the brand has been chasing its own production capacity for most of the years since.

The reason the founding story matters for the brand identity is the same reason it matters for the product: Larkin was solving a problem she had personally lived inside, and the discipline of that problem-solving shows up in every product the brand has launched since. Honeylove does not chase trend-of-the-moment ingredients or fabrics. The brand has stayed inside a narrow product corpus – shaping shorts, bodysuits, briefs, leggings, bras – and refined that corpus across iterations rather than sprawling into adjacent categories. That is unusual restraint in a venture-backed direct-to-consumer brand, and the restraint is the founder’s fingerprint.

What the brand actually sells

Honeylove sits squarely in the shaping category. The brand does not make outerwear, lounge, swim, or sleep. The product range is built around a core idea of structured shaping that does not roll, and every silhouette in the line is engineered around the same waistband and panel construction. The hero categories: shaping shorts and briefs, sculpting bodysuits, shaping leggings, shaping bras, and a small set of slip dresses and tank pieces.

The sizing range goes from XS through 3XL across most of the core line, which lands at roughly a US size 22 to 24 depending on the cut. That is wider than where Skims started in 2019 but narrower than Universal Standard’s full range. For plus-size customers above a 24, the brand still has work to do, and I want to flag that upfront because the marketing language sometimes implies a broader range than the actual product grading delivers. The price tier sits between Spanx and Skims for direct comparison pieces – shaping shorts at roughly $70 to $80, bodysuits at $90 to $130, the leggings at $90, the bras at $60 to $80. Distribution today: honeylove.com direct, Nordstrom in-store and online, Amazon for a curated set of styles, and Macy’s at select doors.

Where the brand gets it right

The first thing Honeylove got right is the waistband problem they originally set out to solve. The Liftwear band on the SuperPower short and the Crossover short genuinely does not roll on most body shapes through most of a wearing day. I have worn the SuperPower in a size 2X under a fitted knit dress for a six-hour event and the band sat where I put it at the start of the night. Spanx Suit Yourself in the same wearing scenario migrates downward by about an inch over the same window, in my experience, and Skims Sculpting Shorts sit lower to begin with and ride up at the thigh. The waistband is the thing the brand built itself around, and it works.

The second is the panel construction across the bodysuits. The brand uses what they call a Sculptlace or patterned-mesh panel through the torso of the sculpting bodysuits, which compresses without creating the smooth-but-stiff feeling of older-generation Spanx, and without the slipperier, softer compression of Skims that smooths more than it shapes. The panel is structured. It holds. For a plus-size body where the goal is genuine redistribution rather than just smoothing, the Honeylove construction does more actual work. The trade-off is breathability, which I will get to in the cons section.

The third is the discipline around the product line. Honeylove launches roughly three to five new silhouettes per year, with each launch building on the existing engineering rather than chasing a new fabric trend. The 2022 leggings extension, the 2023 bra range, the 2024 slip dresses – all sit inside the same construction philosophy as the original shorts. The brand has not done a beauty extension, a swim extension, or an athleisure extension despite the obvious commercial pull to do so. That focus is rare for a venture-backed DTC label past year five.

The fourth is the customer-experience layer that often gets overlooked. Honeylove offers a 100-day return window on most pieces – longer than Spanx, longer than Skims, comparable to Universal Standard’s 60-day window. The pieces are returnable worn, which matters in shapewear because the actual question is whether the silhouette works under your actual clothes, which you cannot test in the dressing room with the tags still on. The return policy is the kind of thing that signals real confidence in the product, and the brand has held it across all of its retail expansion.

Where the brand has room

Honest critique. The price ceiling is a real friction point. At $130 for the V-Neck Shaping Bodysuit, Honeylove is the most expensive of the three names in the standard shapewear conversation. Spanx Suit Yourself at $98 and Skims Sculpting at $78 both do related work for materially less money. The Honeylove construction is better-engineered, but “better-engineered at 30 to 60 percent more” is a math each customer has to do for herself. I think the bodysuits earn it for the right occasion. I am less convinced the basic shaping shorts earn it when the Spanx and Skims options are within a few percentage points of the same outcome.

The breathability is the structural trade-off I mentioned earlier. The Sculptlace and patterned-mesh panels that deliver the structured compression also retain heat more than the lighter Skims fabrications. In a sit-down setting that is fine. For a long event in a warm room or any kind of summer wedding in the South, the bodysuit gets noticeable. This is the cost of the structured panel doing real work, but it is a cost worth naming.

The sizing range above a 22 or 24 is the third gap. The brand markets itself as size-inclusive and the language sometimes implies a wider range than the grading delivers. Pieces in the 3XL grade do not always sit cleanly on bodies above a 24, and the bra range has a narrower band-and-cup matrix than specialty fit brands like Elomi or Cuup. For customers above a 26, the brand is not quite there yet, and that is worth knowing before you place an order.

How it lines up against the rest of the category

Honeylove does not exist in a vacuum. The shapewear category has three serious contenders in 2026, and the choice between them is not arbitrary.

Spanx is the original. Founded by Sara Blakely in 2000, the brand still owns the institutional retail relationships and the broader product range that Honeylove does not have. Spanx Suit Yourself is the bodysuit most associates will hand you first. The fit is consistent. The compression is firm. The cut runs slightly small through the bust on most bodies, and the leg openings can leave a visible line under thinner fabrics. Spanx is the safe choice for the customer who wants the brand the rest of her wardrobe is already paired with. The trade-off is that the product engineering has not moved as far in the last five years as the newer brands have.

Skims is the second name and the softer-feeling option. Founded by Kim Kardashian in 2019 and now sized through the broadest commercial color range in the category, Skims Sculpting and Skims Fits Everybody are the right choice for the customer whose priority is smoothing and a barely-there feel rather than structural redistribution. The pricing sits below Honeylove on most direct comparison pieces. The compression is genuinely softer. Plus-size customers above a 22 will find the Skims range more reliable than the Honeylove grading, which is the trade-off in the other direction.

The honest read: if your priority is the bodysuit that will not roll and will actually hold under a fitted dress, Honeylove is the pick. If your priority is the smoother, softer, lower-compression smoothing layer for a casual lean, Skims wins on price and feel. If your priority is buying inside an institutional brand with the widest retail footprint, Spanx is still the default. Three different problems, three different right answers.

What to buy from them

If you are buying Honeylove for the first time, do not buy the full system. The smart move is to test the brand on one piece that matches the silhouette problem you are actually trying to solve. The pieces I would put on a first order, in priority order:

The Honeylove SuperPower Short at around $72 is the foundation piece and the one I would buy first. The Liftwear waistband holds through a wearing day in a 2X, the leg openings sit at mid-thigh without rolling up, and the compression is firm without bruising. This is the piece that earned the brand its reputation and it remains the strongest item in the lineup.

The V-Neck Shaping Bodysuit at around $128 is the bodysuit I would recommend for a fitted-dress occasion specifically. Run it under a knit midi or a silk slip and the silhouette holds without the typical bodysuit migration at the shoulder seam. Worth the price point if you have a real wear occasion. Probably not worth it as a daily basic.

The Crossover Short at around $68 is the lower-waist alternative to the SuperPower for outfits that need a piece sitting below the natural waist. The construction is the same Liftwear band in a different cut. This is the right pick for high-rise pants or skirts that sit at the hip rather than the waist.

The Silhouette Bra at around $78 is the brand’s strongest bra and works as a layering piece under bodysuits or as a smoothing layer in its own right. The band runs true to size, the cup grading is consistent up through the larger sizes the line carries, and the construction is more structured than the Skims Fits Everybody bras at a similar price point.

The Shaping Legging at around $90 is the piece I am most mixed on but the one I keep returning to in colder months. The compression sits through the leg without bunching at the knee, which is the failure most shaping leggings hit, and the waistband holds the way the brand’s shorts do. Buy this one if leggings are a real part of your rotation. Skip if not.

Why this brand matters in the broader shapewear conversation

Honeylove is worth paying attention to because of what it proved about the shapewear category. The accepted wisdom in 2018 was that the category was mature, that Spanx owned the institutional buyer and Skims would take the next-generation customer, and that there was no room for a third name to mean anything. Larkin’s brand is the counter-evidence. By holding to a narrow product corpus, solving a specific engineering problem, and refusing to sprawl into adjacent categories, Honeylove built a third position in a category that was supposed to be a two-brand race.

For the plus-size customer in particular, this matters because the rise of a third name with structural compression as its core proposition opens up a meaningful option that did not exist seven years ago. Plus-size bodies often need redistribution more than smoothing, and the brand that built its waistband around that distinction is doing real work the older two brands had not prioritized. Honeylove is not perfect, and the price ceiling and the sizing gap above 24 are both real. But the brand has earned its shelf space at Nordstrom. I am wearing the SuperPower short in a 2X under a Christopher John Rogers knit dress to a wedding in two weeks. The link is below.

May 24, 2026