About Sarda
Sarda — known until 2024 as Andrés Sardá — is one of the oldest continuously operating lingerie houses in Spain. Founded in Barcelona in 1962 by Andrés Sardá Sacristán, a textile engineer from a Catalan textile family, the house emerged at a moment when Spanish underwear meant girdles, rigid construction, and very little design. Sardá was among the first European designers to treat lingerie as a fashion object, and the first to import lycra into Spain — a textile innovation that made the soft, fitted lingerie of the next sixty years possible.
By the 1970s the house had expanded into swimwear. By the 1980s the brand was showing at Pasarela Gaudí and, later, Pasarela Cibeles — among the first lingerie houses in Europe to treat the runway as part of the brand's expression, a decade before Victoria's Secret made the format internationally famous. Andrés Sardá's campaigns through the 1970s and 80s, photographed by names including David Hamilton, helped position Spanish lingerie internationally for the first time.
The Nuria Sardá era
Nuria Sardá, the founder's daughter, took over creative direction in 1998 and has led the design team continuously since. Andrés Sardá Sacristán retired in 2008, the same year the company joined the Belgian Van de Velde group — the lingerie group behind Marie Jo, PrimaDonna, and several other premium European houses. The Barcelona atelier remained in place. Nuria Sardá has led the creative direction throughout, and continues to do so today.
The 2024 relaunch
In early 2024 the house relaunched under a shorter name — Sarda — with a repositioning that moved the brand from the luxury segment it had occupied since the 1980s into a more accessible premium tier. The objective was to reach a younger customer who valued the design and construction quality the house had always offered, without the formality that the Andrés Sardá name had come to carry over six decades.
The construction didn't change. The atelier didn't change. The designer didn't change. What changed was the commercial framing — the price tier, the campaign aesthetic, the colour palette, and the way the brand was presented to a new generation of customers who hadn't grown up with the original name. For customers who knew the brand as Andrés Sardá: the fits are unchanged, the patterns are continuous, and the same hands are cutting them. The brand has updated, not restarted.
The collection
Sarda's collections cover lingerie, swimwear, and an expanding ready-to-wear and loungewear range that grew out of the brand's recent collaboration with the Belgian electronic music festival Tomorrowland — the first significant step the house has taken beyond pure lingerie since the swimwear launch fifty years earlier.
The lingerie itself is built around bold colour combinations, graphic prints, and considered cuts. Bras are properly engineered (the textile-engineering heritage shows in the underwire construction, the cup pattern-cutting, and the strap engineering). The materials are Oeko-Tex and REACH certified, manufacturing is monitored to SMETA and WRAP standards, and the design and quality control remain in Spain and Belgium respectively. For a brand that has moved into a more accessible price tier, the construction standards have stayed at the level the house was built on.
Why we stock Sarda
The 2024 relaunch puts Sarda in an interesting position — a sixty-year-old Barcelona house, run by the founder's daughter, with serious textile and construction heritage, now priced and framed to be accessible to a customer who would have found the old Andrés Sardá positioning too formal. That combination is rare, and at the moment, in our view, undersold. Our current edit is small and we're building it carefully. More pieces will follow as we expand the range.
Sarda Lingerie UK — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Sarda the same brand as Andrés Sardá? Yes. The brand was known as Andrés Sardá from 1962 until early 2024, when it was relaunched under the shorter name Sarda. The Barcelona atelier, the creative direction (Nuria Sardá), and the construction standards remain the same. The change was a repositioning, not a new brand.
Where is Sarda made? Sarda is designed in Barcelona, with quality control and distribution managed from Belgium. Stitching is done in the brand's own workshop in Tunisia and at specialised partners in Tunisia, Thailand, and China, all monitored to SMETA and WRAP fair-labour standards.
Does Sarda still make the same fits as Andrés Sardá? Yes. The patterns are continuous, and the same design team that worked under the Andrés Sardá name is responsible for current Sarda collections. If you wore Andrés Sardá successfully in the past, the fit should be familiar.
Is Sarda available in the UK? Yes. Naughty Knickers stocks a curated edit of the current Sarda collection, with discreet UK delivery and standard returns.
