From Feminist Underwear to Skin Confidence: The Story of Me and You

Before It’s Me & You became associated with doctor led skin care, medical aesthetics and confidence in one’s own skin, Me and You existed in a very different but beautifully connected world. It began with cotton underwear, friendship, image making, feminist language, soft rebellion and a refusal to let women’s bodies be dressed only for someone else’s gaze.

There are brands that sell things, and there are brands that capture a change in the weather. Me and You belonged to the second category. Founded in 2014 by best friends Julia Baylis and Mayan Toledano, the label grew from the frustrations of fashion school and the feeling that the industry had left too little room for softness, humour, comfort and personal agency.

In a screen printing class, they made their first pair of feminist underwear. White cotton, full coverage, printed with pink lettering. It was not trying to be invisible. It was not trying to flatter a fantasy. It was not apologising for being practical. It was charming, clever and oddly ceremonial, the sort of garment that felt as if it belonged in a bedroom, a zine, a teenage diary, an art school studio and an editorial spread all at once.

From there, Me and You became more than clothing. It became T shirts, sweatshirts, sweatpants, photography, films, collaborations and a whole visual atmosphere. It was part Tumblr, part bedroom culture, part indie magazine, part feminist slogan, part cotton comfort. It was pretty, but never vacant. Sweet, but not decorative. Intimate, but not passive.

The underwear that started a conversation

When The New York Times featured Me and You in 2015, the story was ostensibly about young women saying no to thongs. But beneath the playful headline was a much larger shift. A generation was beginning to question why lingerie had so often been designed around discomfort, performance and the assumed approval of someone else.

Me and You’s best known piece, the feminist cotton underwear, sold out quickly. That mattered not simply because it was commercially successful, but because it touched a nerve. It gave visual form to something many women already felt: that comfort could be desirable, that self expression could be private, and that underwear did not need to be built around the male gaze to be beautiful.

The old lingerie language had been narrow. Lift. Flatten. Reveal. Seduce. Correct. Me and You offered a different vocabulary. Wear this for yourself. Feel natural. Feel comfortable. Feel funny. Feel soft. Feel powerful without having to be hard.

That is why the story travelled so quickly. It was not only about a silhouette. It was about permission. Permission to choose what felt good. Permission to let the body exist without constant improvement. Permission to be seen in a way that did not feel extracted, polished or consumed.

The female gaze, softness and the right to be seen differently

Me and You was also inseparable from a wider creative movement around the female gaze. Mayan Toledano’s work, often discussed in relation to photography, intimacy and contemporary feminism, approached subjects with a softness that felt quietly radical. Her images did not shout. They allowed space. They made room for boredom, closeness, awkwardness, friendship and the private rituals of girlhood.

That matters because images teach people how to see themselves. For decades, fashion photography often treated young women as objects to be styled, corrected and observed. Me and You’s world felt different because it was built from the inside. The bedroom, the mirror, the messy friendship, the cotton brief, the printed slogan, the soft light. It was not an external fantasy imposed on the body. It was a visual diary of selfhood.

In one interview, Toledano spoke about wanting her settings to feel comfortable and personal, allowing people to be who they are without the external view of society pressing down on them. That idea is central to the Me and You legacy. The image was not just about beauty. It was about atmosphere, consent, recognition and ease.

This is where the connection to modern skin confidence begins to appear. Because whether we are speaking about underwear, photography, style or facial aesthetics, the question is often the same: who is this for?

Is it for approval? Is it for correction? Is it for a trend? Is it for an imagined audience? Or is it for the person living inside the body?

Cherry Glazerr, Clementine Creevy and the coolness of not performing

In July 2015, i D featured a Me and You collaboration with Clementine Creevy of Cherry Glazerr, photographed as part of a visual story involving Mayan Toledano and Daria Kobayashi Ritch. It was exactly the kind of cultural crossover that made Me and You feel alive. Music, fashion, feminism and friendship did not sit in separate boxes. They collided in a world of soft cotton, defiant slogans and girls making their own mythology.

The feature described Me and You as a celebration of female friendship and what it meant to be a girl, with collaboration, support and self love sitting at the centre. It was not a brand pretending to be a community. It was a community that happened to create clothes, photographs and objects people wanted to keep.

What still feels compelling about that moment is its refusal to over explain itself. It did not need a corporate manifesto to prove its relevance. The images did the work. They said: this is what young women look like when they are not being flattened into one approved idea of desirability.

That visual freedom sits at the heart of the bridge between the old Me and You and the current It’s Me & You Clinic. The clinic is not continuing the clothing line. It is continuing the philosophy: confidence should not require performance. Beauty should not mean surrendering your own face, body or character to someone else’s formula.

Comfort was never superficial

One of the mistakes people make when discussing fashion, beauty or aesthetics is assuming that surface means shallow. But the surface is where much of life is felt. Fabric touches skin. Skin meets the world. A face carries stress, age, illness, joy, grief, sleep, hormones and time. A body can feel at home or not at home depending on small daily details that outsiders may never notice.

Me and You understood this instinctively. The appeal of the cotton brief was not simply that it looked cute in photographs. It was that it offered an alternative to the idea that women should tolerate discomfort in order to appear desirable. It quietly asked why ease had been made unfashionable.

That question still matters in aesthetics. Many people arrive at skin clinics not because they want to become someone else, but because they want to feel more like themselves again. They want their skin to look less tired. They want softness restored, not identity erased. They want support, not pressure. They want a practitioner who can tell them what is possible, what is safe and what is not necessary.

The move from underwear to skin may look like a leap, but emotionally it is a continuation. The original Me and You was about feeling comfortable in what touched your skin. It’s Me & You Clinic is about feeling comfortable in the skin itself.

From feminist branding to clinical responsibility

There is, of course, a necessary difference between fashion and medical aesthetics. A slogan can provoke. A photograph can suggest. A T shirt can charm. But a clinical treatment carries a different level of responsibility.

That is why the current chapter of It’s Me & You is doctor led, consultation led and rooted in careful patient assessment. At the Kingston upon Thames clinic, the conversation begins not with what is fashionable, but with what is appropriate. Facial anatomy, skin quality, treatment suitability, medical history, expectations and safety all matter.

This is where the evolution becomes important. The early Me and You world pushed back against the idea that women’s bodies should be styled purely for external approval. The clinic now pushes back against another modern pressure: the idea that faces should be altered quickly, trend by trend, until everyone begins to look faintly alike.

That is not our philosophy.

At It’s Me & You Clinic, good aesthetic care is subtle, respectful and individual. It should preserve character. It should support natural expression. It should not make someone feel embarrassed about ageing, pressured into unnecessary treatment or separated from their own identity.

The body, the face and the quiet politics of choice

The cultural debate around Me and You was never entirely uncomplicated. Some writers celebrated the feminist underwear as a symbol of choice and comfort. Others questioned whether empowerment could really be bought, printed or worn across the body.

That critique is worth keeping. It protects the story from becoming too neat. Confidence is not something any brand can simply sell. Empowerment is not located in a product, a treatment or a slogan. It has to be supported by agency, information, safety and personal meaning.

But appearance still matters. Not because it is everything, but because people live through it. They are seen through it. They are judged through it. They recognise themselves through it. To dismiss fashion or aesthetics as merely superficial is to ignore how deeply the visible self can affect daily confidence.

The more honest position is this: clothes and treatments do not create self worth, but they can participate in how someone experiences themselves. They can support comfort. They can restore ease. They can give language to something internal. They can help someone feel more aligned when approached thoughtfully and safely.

That is the bridge.

From cotton underwear to collagen stimulation. From feminist slogans to clinical consultations. From bedroom photography to treatment rooms. From the visual culture of girlhood to the mature, considered choices people make about skin, ageing and self presentation.

Why It’s Me & You Clinic belongs in this story

It’s Me & You Clinic is based in Kingston upon Thames and led by Dr Laura Geige, with a focus on medical aesthetics, skin rejuvenation and natural looking treatment plans. The clinic welcomes patients from Kingston, Surrey, London and surrounding areas who are looking for careful, personalised care rather than rushed or trend driven aesthetics.

The phrase “It’s Me & You” feels particularly fitting for a clinic because good aesthetic care is relational. It is not simply practitioner and procedure. It is conversation, trust, judgement and shared decision making. It is the patient saying, this is how I feel. It is the clinician saying, this is what I can safely advise. It is a process built between two people, not imposed from one side.

That patient first approach is the modern expression of the brand’s older values. Where the fashion brand created a safe visual world around self expression, the clinic creates a safe clinical space around skin confidence. Where the original Me and You celebrated bodies without demanding they fit a single ideal, the clinic approaches faces with the same respect for individuality.

Skin confidence as self expression

Skin is intimate. It is public and private at once. It is what we show the world, but it is also something we feel from within. When skin feels dull, inflamed, tired, dry, lax or unfamiliar, it can affect far more than the mirror. It can affect how someone carries themselves, how they dress, how they socialise, how they photograph, how they age in their own imagination.

For some patients, skin confidence may mean a gentle skin booster. For others, it may involve anti wrinkle treatments, dermal fillers, facial balancing or regenerative treatments. For many, it may simply begin with understanding what is happening to their skin and what options are available.

The most important part is that the choice remains personal. Just as the original Me and You did not tell women they had to reject thongs to be feminist, It’s Me & You Clinic does not tell patients they must have aesthetic treatments to feel confident. The point is options. Education. Safety. A more generous idea of beauty.

Modern beauty should have room for the person who wants to age entirely untreated, the person who wants a little help looking less tired, the person who wants skin quality support, and the person who wants carefully planned facial rejuvenation. The ethical line is not treatment versus no treatment. It is pressure versus agency.

A Kingston clinic with a wider cultural memory

Today, It’s Me & You Clinic sits in Kingston upon Thames, close to the rhythms of real life: the station, the river, local shops, coffee before an appointment, school runs, work days, quiet moments of decision. It is a very different scene from the early Me and You photoshoots, but the intimacy remains.

A person walking into a clinic is often carrying more than a treatment enquiry. They may be carrying years of feeling tired, a sudden change in confidence, the effects of stress, ageing, illness, pregnancy, hormones or simply the desire to look after themselves with more intention. That deserves care, not salesmanship.

We believe the best clinics do not make patients feel observed like objects. They make them feel understood as people. That belief links directly back to the female gaze principles that shaped the original Me and You universe: comfort, softness, identity and the right to be seen without being reduced.

Preserving the old Me and You while honouring the new one

Many people may arrive here through old editorial links, archived fashion features, press references or cultural articles about the original Me and You brand. Those links are part of the story. They show that Me and You once stood at the centre of a real conversation about feminist fashion, comfort, visibility and young women defining themselves on their own terms.

Rather than allowing that history to disappear into broken pages or unrelated redirects, this article exists to preserve the continuity. The category has changed. The values have not.

Me and You began by asking why underwear could not be comfortable, expressive and self determined. It’s Me & You Clinic now asks why aesthetics cannot be safe, subtle, personal and emotionally intelligent.

Both questions matter because both return power to the person. The person wearing the clothes. The person looking in the mirror. The person deciding whether to have treatment. The person choosing what beauty means at this stage of life.

From feeling comfortable in what you wear to feeling comfortable in your skin

If the original Me and You belonged to the bedroom mirror, the current It’s Me & You belongs to the consultation room. Yet both spaces are intimate. Both involve self recognition. Both can hold vulnerability. Both can become places where a person decides, quietly and without spectacle, that they deserve to feel good.

That is why this transition makes sense. Not as a marketing trick, but as a natural maturation of the same philosophy.

The young women who once found confidence in feminist cotton underwear are now adults thinking about skin, ageing, stress, health, expression and identity in more complex ways. The conversation has grown up with them. It has moved from what touches the skin to the skin itself. From visual rebellion to clinical care. From the aesthetics of girlhood to the aesthetics of adult self trust.

And through all of it, the heart of the message remains simple.

You do not have to perform beauty for anyone else. You do not have to abandon comfort to feel desirable. You do not have to erase your features to feel refreshed. You do not have to follow every trend to care for yourself.

You can choose. You can ask questions. You can take up space. You can be soft. You can be practical. You can be visible. You can be private. You can change your mind.

You can feel at home in yourself.