For the record Lille is not a cutesy way of spelling “lily”, it’s pronounced lēl, like wheel. The name comes from a city in France that is known for it’s textile industry. We chose to name the shop Lille because:

a) lingerie is historically french

b) the shop (hopfully) has a bit of a french feel to it

c) it’s a clothing store so the textile thing kind of makes sense to us

d) the word looks very nice in print

e) it’s short and sweet

f) of the many many french type names we were discussing, lille seemed like it would be easy to pronounce, oops. I’d say that 9 times out of 10 when someone says the name they say lily. It’s not a big deal, lily is a perfectly nice name too, it’s just not what it is. Oh I hope I don’t sound snotty, I really don’t mean to. I’ll say that conversely, when people ask me the name of my store I say “Lille” and they say “what?” and I say “Lille, l-i-l-l-e?” and they go “Oh… Lille. That’s nice.”

It’s very hard to come up with a good name for a store or product that hasn’t already been taken. We didn’t want to be too tongue-in-cheek, but we didn’t want to come off as hyper-pretentious either, because our shop is neither thing. I don’t know, I guess I’m just making this an informative little public service blog post. Here’s a fun game, if you’re reading this. Leave us a comment with what you would call your lingerie shop. I’d love to hear what other people come up with!