Nicole de Havilland is the Founder and Managing Director of RECO HEART® Ltd and product designer of the Reco Bra®. Nicole worked as a Lymphoedema Practitioner within the breast cancer patient industry both for the NHS and privately.

As a clinician, Nicole has over 20 years of experience treating breast surgery cases. Her career included a position at the NHS St. Margaret’s Essex Breast Unit, working on referrals related to breast cancer complications including breast reconstructions. Nicole set up the West Essex Lymphoedema service – the first GP referral system to include regulated referral protocols for patients with all forms of primary and secondary lymphoedema.

Nicole dealt with the most complex breast surgery cases and became a relied upon expert in her field, attaining practicing privileges within sites such as Rivers Ramsay Hospital for many years. The Princess Grace Hospital in London owned by HCA Healthcare UK invited Nicole to set up and manage a service for their breast patients within their renowned London Breast Institute (LBI). Within the LBI Nicole worked with the team and closely with one of the professors, treating their patients from all over the world.

Later Nicole also set up and ran a consultation and treatment service for breast patients at the London Breast Clinic based at the Medical Chambers in renowned Harley Street, London. Nicole cared passionately and unconditionally for the patients under her care and at this time heard continuous complaints from her patients that there was not a suitable and comfortable post-surgical bra available. Nicole also witnessed some of these issues including the irritation of seams and uniformed compressive garments that impeded the lymphatic flow causing complications, in particular to incisions. All of which led to impaired and compromised healing for these patients. The concept of the initial idea of creating, designing and manufacturing a bra garment that would or could cater for all breast cancer, cosmetic and cardio surgeries is a difficult challenge. It also proved hard once the design idea was drawn up to then find suitable manufacturers. This took four years in the making as Nicole continued to run busy clinics whilst collating samples from around the globe.

Finally, a manufacturer agreed to make the seamless bra prototypes which took a year, including a total of fifteen samples. Nicole also had the innovative idea to add an antimicrobial that would prevent body odour issues for the recommended recovery wear times and would provide a safety factor in infection risk reduction. The product was named Reco Bra®, an abbreviation of recovery, logo trademarked and the bra was awarded a design registration. The idea behind giving one post-surgical bra a brand name Nicole felt would make it easier for women to find. Reco Bra® is specifically designed to meet the needs of women looking for an immediate post-surgical garment that can be applied directly in theatres or when returning from hospital.

Nicole has worked extremely hard since launching the Reco Bra® product in September 2017 and since becoming the director of her own company Reco Heart Ltd, her passion has never waned. The product is beginning to be one of the most recognised and chosen products for patients, clinics, distributors and leading UK hospitals. The aim is to continue her patient centric approach to change the post-operative market globally.

We hope that you love our Reco Bra® product – wishing you all a comfortable and speedy recovery!