While working as a young fashion journalist and stylist at publications like Vogue and Tatler, Pip Durell handled thousands of garments and, like many of us, wondered why high-end pieces were so expensive. It was her impetus to start the now-cult brand With Nothing Underneath. Her aim was to make women’s shirting really well and at a reasonable price.
“There just wasn’t anything high quality in the middle market,” says Durell, who is a fan of menswear-inspired dressing. “You had bad stuff on the high street and you had really expensive shirts. I thought, ‘But it’s cotton poplin – it shouldn’t cost that much.’ I wanted to make them for under £100.”
Fast-forward seven years, when Broadsheet visits Durell’s Battersea studio, and her team is reviewing mood boards and fabric samples for a spring 2026 collection. The range now includes everything from trenches to knits, but at its core remain those perfectly cut cotton poplin shirts for less than £100.
The brand opened a second London store in Notting Hill this summer (the first was in Belgravia, and there’s also a boutique in Salcombe), after receiving funding for the first time to scale the business’s bricks and mortar presence. “We were completely bootstrapped on £7500 before then,” Durell says.
Durell credits WNU’s success to her team’s ability to tap into what women want. “What’s happened historically is that women get categorised – ‘the working woman’, ‘the stay-at-home mum’ – but what they need is clothing that’s going to perform for them as they keep going throughout the day. They don’t want to look too done, but people really do look for that full outfit from one place.”
To fulfil that need, the brand has ramped up its range this past year to offer everything women need to take them from a 9am meeting to a 9pm Martini. For Londoners, achieving this is about nailing “the art of effortless”, says Durell. “Unlike our French or US counterparts, there’s an off-kilterness to Brit style.”
Durell has refined her four key shirt shapes – the Boyfriend, the Dress Shirt, the Classic and the Weekend – and last autumn launched the Rampling tailored trouser after much honing. “We want to make sure that we are extremely focused on the cut, the fit, the form,” she says. This season’s collection includes a herringbone coat, plaid trousers, and yak and lambswool knits, which have been catnip for customers – including the Princess of Wales.
Durell’s eye for detail means that her shirt styles have equal kudos with the fashion crowd and those in the corporate world. Her exaggerated-cuff shirts were photographed on editors at fashion week, and they’re also a big hit with lawyers (“They are loving that little drama moment”). And on the more casual end of the spectrum, the brand’s plaid shirts are “selling really well and we’re seeing a lot of people wearing them tied around their waist”.
The latest WNU launch is a tuxedo blazer with a silk lapel, which Durell is excited about. “It can really be taken from low to high: wear it over a T-shirt and jeans to a meeting,” she says – or take it into the evening by wearing it with nothing underneath.
Durell’s favourite place to style-spot remains London’s men’s tailoring epicentre, Jermyn Street. “I love looking into the shirt makers and seeing the beautiful men’s eveningwear. I’m inspired by the fact that historically, say 100 years ago, men needed performance wear – it had to have pockets and be warm. I love giving that sort of louche, undone, cool feel to womenswear.”
