A few weeks ago I was flying from Berlin to South Africa, wearing my most comfortable (and at the time, white) tracksuit. The kind of outfit you put on when you've been packing up your apartment, saying goodbye to half your belongings, and you just need 14 hours of stillness and comfort ahead of you.
Then my period started. Six days early. Totally out of schedule.
The only "alternative" I had on me, while my nookees lived somewhere in the cargo of the plane, was a stack of disposable pads the flight attendant kindly handed me. Plastic, pure plastic. The exact thing I'd built my company to replace.
I wore them all the way to Cape Town because what else was I going to do.
This isn't a blog post about how disposables are terrible. (You already know that. You wouldn't be reading this if you didn't.) This is a blog post about the thing that came after disposables for most of us - period panties - and what nobody really wants to talk about when they sell them to you.
Specifically: wearing one piece of period underwear all day.
Because that's the product promise of most period panties, right? Put them on in the morning, wear them for 12 hours, change for a new pair at night. Marketed as freedom. Marketed as convenience. Pretty close to what tampons promised in the 90s, actually.
Here's what nobody tells you about that promise.
WHAT'S ACTUALLY IN YOUR PERIOD PANTY
Most period panties on the market are made from synthetic fibres - polyester, nylon, elastane. The leak-proof inner layer is usually polyurethane laminate (PUL), which is, structurally, plastic. The anti-odour layer is treated with biocides - most commonly nanosilver, silver chloride, or other antimicrobial agents.
Nanosilver kills bacteria. That's the point. The problem is your vulva isn't supposed to be bacteria-free, and the genital area absorbs chemicals at a rate up to 60 times higher than other parts of the body. Whatever is sitting in the gusset of your underwear is also, slowly, sitting inside you.
PFAs (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are another story. They're forever chemicals - they don't break down, they accumulate in the body, they've been linked to hormonal disruption and reproductive issues. They've been found in major period panty brands repeatedly, in independent third-party tests.
You probably already knew about the chemicals. What gets left out of the marketing is how much chemical is sitting in fabric you wear directly against your most absorbent skin, for 8-12 hours, every single day of your period, for years.
THE 40°C PROBLEM
Look at the care label of almost any period panty on the market: max 40°C wash.
There's a reason for that. Plastic-based fabrics, biocide coatings and synthetic elastics break down at higher temperatures. So the brand tells you to wash cold. Sounds eco-friendly, actually - cold wash, save energy.
Here's the part they don't say: blood, bacteria and yeast are not reliably killed at 40°C. They are reliably killed at 60°C. That's why you probably wash your bath towels at the same heat as well.
So you're putting a piece of fabric that has absorbed menstrual blood for 12 hours into a 40°C cycle and hoping for the best. The biocides are meant to "handle" the bacterial side of that equation. Which is to say - the brand has put chemicals into the fabric to make up for the fact that the fabric can't be properly washed.
THE WARM, WET, BLOOD-FILLED BIOTOPE PROBLEM
Now imagine you're wearing this product through an entire workday. A warm, damp environment, sitting close to your skin, holding menstrual blood. Polyester traps moisture. PUL doesn't breathe. The result is a small biotope, ideal for bacterial and fungal growth.
That's the situation the biocides are working against. (And, eventually, leaching out into your body to do so.)
This is also why so many women, when they switch from synthetic period panties to nookees, write to me to say their UTIs stopped. Their itching stopped. The "diaper smell" they'd accepted as a normal period smell - gone.
THE "WHAT DO YOU DO AT LUNCHTIME" PROBLEM
Picture changing your period panty mid-day. You're in a public bathroom. You take off your shoes, your trousers, your underwear, find somewhere clean to put them, swap in a fresh pair, redo everything, and somehow leave with the used pair stored in your bag.
The truth: most women just don't do it. They keep wearing the same pair all day.
Which is exactly what the marketing promised - and exactly what makes the warm-wet-biotope problem worse.
WHAT I DID DIFFERENTLY
When I started nookees, the question I kept coming back to was: why are we forced to choose between organic-but-uncomfortable and synthetic-but-workable?
The answer is the click-in system. Organic cotton PADS with three little snaps, that click securely inside the matching lyocell PANTY. You don't change the whole panty - you change just the PAD. Three little clicks, swap, done.
Because the PADS are 100% organic cotton (IVN Best certified - the highest organic certification there is), there's no plastic to worry about. Which means they can be washed at 60°C. Properly clean. No biocides needed, because the materials are breathable enough that bacteria don't take hold.
No PFAs. No nanosilver. No polyester. No plastic in the part that touches you. The PANTY itself is made from lyocell - a wood-cellulose fibre that's biodegradable, breathable and soft. Not polyester pretending to be sustainable.
You wear the PANTY all day. You swap the PAD when you need to. You wash it hot. You use it again, and again, for years.
That is the whole product.
IF YOU'VE ALREADY DONE THE WORK...
...of moving past disposables, this is the next step. You don't need to be convinced. You're not waiting to be told that conventional period products are a problem - you've already figured that out. You're just waiting for a product that doesn't ask you to compromise on either side.
THE SAVER is our complete starter set: one PANTY, three organic cotton PADS in different absorbencies (light, medium, heavy), two POUCHES for the in-between moments. Everything you need to actually try this properly, in one box, for less than buying separately.
It's the product I built because I was where you are.
