Harlette
| Harlette | |
|---|---|
| Born |
17 July 1975 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
| Residence | London, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | British |
| Citizenship | British |
| Education | Bond University |
| Occupation | Designer, entrepreneur, lingerie |
| Years active | 2005–present |
| Known for | Britain's Next Big Thing (2011) |
| Website | http://www.harlette.com |
Harlette De Falaise (born 17 July 1975) is an Australian and British designer, media personality and entrepreneur, best known for her work in Britain and Saudi Arabia.
Harlette was born to British parents in Sydney, New South Wales, and grew up in the small beach community of Little Manly.
Harlette was awarded a scholarship for highest academic achievement and started university at age 16. She graduated from Bond University with an MBA and a Bachelor of Information Technology.
At the age of 30, she moved to London, where she gained contract roles at investment banks including Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.
In 2005, Harlette founded the company Harlette Luxury Lingerie, to provide a one of a kind luxury lingerie concierge service, after a chance meeting at the Kensington chamber of commerce function with London Fashion Forum representative David Jones.
Harlette was accepted in early 2006 to take one of the 20 places given each year to be mentored by the London Fashion Forum program. Soon, she was interviewed by the BBC during London Fashion Week for a lingerie story. Wanting to research the market, she gained luxury retail roles including Selfridges and Louis Vuitton in Oslo, Norway in 2006 and 2007.
She gained widespread media attention in 2009 when she was the first woman invited to Saudi Arabia to run a 10-day master class on the Art of Selling Lingerie for 26 Saudi women. This was created to support the Reem Asaad lingerie KSA campaign started on Facebook in 2008 to enable women to work in lingerie stores. On 6 June 2011, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia decreed that women should work in lingerie stores instead of men. Until this time only men had been allowed to work in lingerie stores. No formal lingerie sales or fitting training were available for measuring women for bras, no fitting rooms existed, and there were high censorship levels of information in the kingdom in relation to lingerie companies' websites, due to modesty laws.
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