The Siren Basics Sisters Are No Strangers To The Perils Of Family Business
Clara and Brenda Liang, the sisters behind Siren Basics, talk working together, building worlds, and embracing the panopticon.
By Alex Jhamb Burns
Photos by Ramona Jingru Wang
Published
There is a special kind of magic — maybe it’s electricity that flows invisibly — between some sisters. I say this as a sister. My sister and I are very different, but we still have that unspoken bond. We finish each other’s sentences (it’s a little freaky sometimes), read each other’s minds, and sometimes speak in unintelligible code.
Sisters and co-founders Brenda and Clara Liang have that buzzy kinship. When I get on the Zoom call with them, they are calling in from different cities – different countries technically (Clara is up north in Canada), but it has not been long since they last spoke. In very Gen Z fashion, they introduce themselves to me by sharing their astrology signs. Brenda, the older sister, is a Taurus, and Clara, the younger one, a Pisces. Together, they form the cool-girl underwear brand Siren Basics.
Siren Basics began to develop back when Brenda was a freshman at NYU and Clara was still in high school. Now, Brenda has graduated, and Clara is in her second year at McGill University in Montreal. Siren Basics began from a straightforward quest of Brenda’s: she needed new underwear. She was looking for a style that held up to the aesthetic of the glossy Instagram ads we all get for luxury lingerie but found that most of it was at an inaccessible price point, costing at times upwards of $50 a pair.
Now, a few years into their venture, the Liang sisters have found their groove in the business, each carving out a role, though they are always collaborating. Their underwear is meshy and colorful and falls somewhere at the intersection of girly and punk. Clara, who is a self-proclaimed numbers lover, runs the production side of Siren, which entails working with distribution as well as customer service and sizing. The creative direction originates mostly from Brenda, though they both describe each other as inherently creative individuals.
The sisters spoke about what it is like to have business be a family affair, explain “Tube girl” philosophy to me, and discuss what aesthetics are hot to them right now.