Bellibind at The Penthouse Edit: What New York Fashion Week Taught Us About Making Things By Hand
Bellibind showed at The Penthouse Edit during New York Fashion Week, the two-day independent designer showcase co-hosted by RAISEfashion and Refinery29 at The Standard, East Village, with Afterpay as title sponsor. We were there as a participant in Victoria's Secret's Runway to Revenue program, alongside Perfect DD, Springrose, D.bleu.dazzled and Rifcare. Refinery29 covered the showcase and named us in it.
You can read their write-up here: Inside RAISEfashion and R29's The Penthouse Edit.
Why this showcase existed
The traditional Fashion Week calendar prices independent brands out. Production budgets, venue costs, legacy structures. Plenty of good work never reaches the stage because the stage is expensive.
RAISEfashion and Refinery29 took the penthouse at The Standard and built something different. No runway. No seating chart. No invitation-only door. Buyers, editors and stylists walked the same floor as anyone who saw it online and decided to come up, and every designer stood next to their own work explaining how it was made.
RAISEfashion's executive director Felita Harris made a point in that coverage that stuck with me. People treat Fashion Week as a purely experiential thing, and it isn't. Designers are in business to make money and grow, and the showcase was built around that rather than around the spectacle. The Standard Hotels
The showroom was curated by April Hennig and Roopal Patel.
What changed for us in that room
For years I've described Bellibind as a postpartum recovery brand. Careful language. Doula language. The kind of phrasing that makes a product sound responsible rather than desirable.
Standing on that floor, watching buyers pick up the wrap and turn it over the way they turned over the tailoring and the eyewear and the jewellery, I stopped hedging.
We're a postpartum couture fashion brand. The wrap belongs in that conversation, not adjacent to it.
That sounds like a small shift in words. It isn't. It changes which rooms we try to get into, who we talk to, and what a hand-made garment is allowed to be worth.
Maternity became fashion decades ago. Postpartum never did. That week was the first time changing it felt like a plan rather than a line I say.
The harder lesson: artisan work versus retail scale
The rest of that penthouse was full of people making things by hand. Tailoring built on traditional Mexican technique. Sculptural millinery. Jewellery with real craft in it.
Every one of us is facing the same problem. Making something by hand is the reason the product is good. It's also the reason it's hard to make a lot of it.
Our wrap is one continuous length of cotton gauze with no seam, no hook and no size. The edge is cut and left to fray rather than hemmed, because a hem would put a ridge across the abdomen. Those aren't shortcuts. They're decisions that cost more, not less.
Every artisan brand eventually gets asked whether it would loosen one of those decisions to make retail volume work. Machine-finish the edge. Move to a bonded fabric that cuts faster. Add sizes so a warehouse can pick and pack without thinking.
What I took from that showcase is that the brands doing this well don't answer by compromising the product. They answer by rebuilding the supply chain around it.
That's the work in front of us. Not making the wrap easier to produce. Making Bellibind capable of producing it at volume without touching the thing that makes it worth buying.
What Runway to Revenue is
Victoria's Secret runs Runway to Revenue to give women founders access to mentorship, resources and the kind of connections that are hard to get from the outside. Five of us from the program showed at The Penthouse Edit.
That's how a postpartum brand ended up on a Fashion Week floor in the first place. Not through a production budget we don't have. Through a programme that exists because the budget gap is real.
What the wrap actually is
For anyone who found us through the showcase.
The Belly Besties Kit is built around a Bengkung-style belly wrap. One continuous length of 100% cotton gauze, open weave, wrapped around the torso and tied by hand into a column of knots down the centre.
- No seam, no hook, no panel
- No size. One length, all bodies
- Raw selvedge, left unbound
- Colourways: Olive, Golden, Cloud, Champagne, Candy Pink, Ivory
- Licensed Seal of Cotton, Cotton Incorporated
A compression garment is built to a measurement, and the body is asked to meet it. A postpartum body changes weekly, so that number stops being right almost immediately. The wrap has no fixed circumference. She ties it herself and reties it as often as she wants.
The kit pairs the wrap with Shine Belli and Body Oil. Once your order ships, you'll get access to the wrap tutorials so the technique travels with the cloth. One-to-one consults are available separately.
Where Bengkung binding comes from
Belly binding after birth isn't new and we've never claimed to have invented it. It moves through generations, mother to daughter, across many cultures. Bengkung wrapping is one of the oldest documented forms.
I found it as a postpartum doula. By 2016 nearly all of my work had become binding and recovery support, and I trained in one of the first Bengkung workshops on the West Coast as one of five practitioners in the room.
What struck me in that penthouse was how familiar the construction looked next to everything else on the floor. Braided knots. Deep ruching. Fashion calls it draping. Women have been doing it on their own bodies for thousands of years for reasons that had nothing to do with fashion.
We're not borrowing from the runway. We're being recognised by it.
Frequently asked questions
What was The Penthouse Edit?
A two-day independent designer showcase during New York Fashion Week in September 2026, co-hosted by RAISEfashion and Refinery29 at The Standard, East Village, with Afterpay as title sponsor. It was free and open to the public.
Was Bellibind part of it?
Yes. Bellibind showed as a participant in Victoria's Secret's Runway to Revenue program and was named in Refinery29's coverage of the event.
What did Bellibind show?
The Belly Besties Kit, built around the hand-tied Bengkung-style belly wrap.
What is Runway to Revenue?
A Victoria's Secret program that connects women founders with mentorship, resources and industry relationships to help them grow their businesses.
What is Bengkung belly binding?
A traditional postpartum wrapping practice using a long piece of cloth tied in a series of knots around the torso. It appears across many cultures and has been passed down for generations.
What size wrap do I need?
There are no sizes. It's one continuous length that ties to fit whatever body is wearing it.
Who founded Bellibind?
Princess McKinney, a certified postpartum doula and trained nurse. The brand was founded in 2017 in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Written and reviewed by Princess McKinney, Certified Postpartum Doula
Princess McKinney is a certified postpartum doula with over 10 years of experience supporting mothers through recovery and the fourth trimester. She trained in one of the first Bengkung belly binding workshops on the West Coast and is the founder of Bellibind.
About Bellibind
Bellibind is a postpartum recovery care brand founded in 2017 in Scottsdale, Arizona by certified doula Princess McKinney. Its flagship product is the Belly Besties Kit, built around a hand-tied Bengkung-style wrap in 100% cotton that a mother ties and reties herself as her body changes. Bellibind also makes recovery oils, aromatherapy, and the Diaper Clutch, and offers private postpartum consults. Learn more at bellibind.com.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Bellibind products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
