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Women Entrepreneurship

Selene Dior: Bringing Function To Fashion

Selene Dior was a competitive swimmer for 17 years, and a lack of funds and family economic issues...

CanadianSMEPublished December 22, 2022 · 3 min read
Small Business Canada

Small Business Canada

Selene Dior was a competitive swimmer for 17 years, and a lack of funds and family economic issues led her to become a lifeguard. Soon into her career, she identified an issue, a lack of functional swimwear for women, that turned her to entrepreneurship and to found Vitae Apparel.

From Swimmer to Entrepreneur

Selene Dior had to retire from competitive swimming early in her career. After she stopped swimming, her body dramatically changed. The drastic weight gain and loss affected her self-esteem. 

Over time, she regained her confidence slowly and learnt to love her body more and more every day. With this in mind, she vowed to build a community where women could support one another and discover their self-love.

Her personal experience of dealing with body positivity and her experience of being a lifeguard made her realize and be disappointed in the lack of functional yet fashionable bikinis/swimwear. 

In the summer of 2016, she took on the challenge of dedicating her time to designing swimwear that combined the two elements of function and style. 

In December 2016, Selene Dior founded Vitae Apparel with the goal of building strength and confidence in all women. Inspired by the durability of competitive swimwear and contemporary fashion, they design comfy, practicable swimsuits and activewear. 

An Empowering Brand 

Vitae Apparel seeks to redefine the social and physical standards for women across the globe. They hope to empower women to be more confident and fall in love with their bodies. Their apparel collection tries to embody beauty in all shapes, sizes, and ethnicities.

They have built a strong and supportive community of women that embrace their values fully over the years, ultimately becoming the basis for their Vitae Ambassador Program. 

The Vitae Apparel Ambassador Program encourages and supports women’s empowerment, body positivity and self-love. Hence, they constantly feature girls with different body types and backgrounds.

Their ambassador program allows you to meet and connect with other Vitae Babes worldwide and offers countless opportunities for exposure across all their social media networks. 


Ensuring Quality Design

Vitae Apparel ensures that all its products are of the highest calibre through consistent quality testing and control.

Selene designs and hand-draws each product, which is transferred to Adobe Illustrator. After the designs are submitted to their manufacturers, it goes through roughly 3-4 rounds of sampling. Only after these steps are the products confirmed as the final design. 

The result of these locally made products in Vancouver, BC, is a beautifully tailored new fit waiting for you on your doorstep. In addition, they are a sustainable and ethical company that ensures that all workers in its manufacturing facilities are paid and treated equally. 

Significance of Vitae Apparel

Vitae Apparel is for all body types. Their clothes are designed to hug your gorgeous curves, are suitable for the beach or the gym and make you look and feel confident in Vitae Apparel.

Their fabrics are designed to be a 4-way stretch. This means that your pants stay put with every squat, lunge and dive without slipping waistbands and saggy swim bottoms. In addition, their signature stretch fabric moves with you for a beautifully smooth fit and a buttery-soft feel.

Their signature apparel is 100% breathable, sweat-wicking fabric to keep you cool and dry.

As a responsible business, Vitae Apparel is conscious of the company’s carbon footprint and constantly works on becoming more sustainable. They are on a mission to continue providing high-quality, affordable apparel while ensuring ethical manufacturing practices. 

They strive to maintain transparency about their manufacturing processes and be a more sustainable and eco-friendly company.

Vitae Apparel is a movement towards body positivity, changing what it means to be a woman and make a difference in society. To know more about their products, visit their website at  https://vitaeapparel.com/. 

Small businesses are ventures that find a niche in the market while filling a market gap. To read more about these interesting business ideas, subscribe to CanadianSME Small Business Magazine https://lnkd.in/dbqmSKN. For the latest updates, visit our Twitter page at @canadian_sme.

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