About us
1996. Chimbote, on the northern coast of Peru.
The scent of salt drifting through the windows. Warm asphalt beneath bare feet. Two sisters playing at selling under the summer sun. Those summers never seemed to end.
Cyndi in a navy bikini with red stripes. An image we still carry within us.
Years would pass before we understood that something of Leonika was already there...
Where we come from…
We weren't born into wealth. Our grandfather melted metal in a workshop and sometimes, between pieces, he would sketch a miniature Machu Picchu, almost an artist's whim. Our father inherited the workshop. Our grandmother and our mother sold clothing. We grew up between two pairs of hands: those that forged, and those that folded.
What we learned from our mother…
Our mother sold, too, for a time. Lingerie, mostly. She started it, but she couldn't sustain it. She had no network, no one to teach her to choose herself first. She did what she could with what she had.
Over the years, that story stayed with us and turned into a question: What would have happened if she had chosen herself?
We don't have the answer. But we understood something: that question wasn't only about her. It was about all the women who came before us. And it was, above all, about ourselves. Leonika was born from there.
A healing idea… Choosing yourself isn't selfishness. It's love in its purest form: the kind that turns first towards yourself, so that you can then hold up others. A woman who chooses herself is a powerful woman.
Swimwear for the ritual of returning to yourself.
We design pieces made to last: swimwear that stays in your drawer season after season, with silhouettes that flatter and details that hold up to a closer look. Elegant. Effortlessly sensual.
But a Leonika bikini isn't just another accessory. It's the excuse for something we do less and less often. Closing your eyes to the sun. Wetting your hair. Gazing out at the sea. Returning to the body. To the water. To yourself.
That's what we design. Pieces to accompany the ritual of choosing yourself.
Two sisters, one journey, one city.
Cyndi crossed the Atlantic first. Hally followed. Trains, airports, cities that never quite made sense. Until Madrid imposed itself on its own — not as a decision, but as something self-evident.
Here, far from Peru but close to who we wanted to be, we began to give shape to what was coming.
Cyndi is a designer: a free spirit, a creative eye.
Hally, a psychologist and trans woman, brings to Leonika a deeply human vision of identity, care and freedom.
One pours her soul into shapes; the other, into words.
The name
The years passed. Each of us, in her own way, went through her own — each held up by the other. The desire to build something of our own emerged. Something with love and with soul. A legacy.
2023. An ordinary morning. The name comes to Cyndi whole, almost without thinking, as if it had been waiting a long time to be spoken: Leonika. Her instinct chose it, and we simply listened.
First came the idea. Then, its meaning. Leon: the lioness, serene strength. Ika: the luminous, the intuitive part within every woman. And, above all, León: our mother's maiden name. Leo, too, as in the zodiac sign. The unconscious is a fine seamstress: it stitches together what the mind doesn't say in words.
For her, and for all
Leonika is a tribute to the women who made us: our mother, our grandmother, our support network. To those who came before and to those who will come after. To every woman in the world who cares for herself like a lioness, so she can care for others in the same way. With strength. With femininity. As a brand founded by two sisters, two women, at Leonika we believe in a femininity that is free, powerful and chosen by each woman.
Choose yourself.
Hally & Cyndi