Whether it's glamorous lace or comfortable cotton, women are finally calling the shots on how their lingerie should look. About time too.
Lingerie, by its nature, is intimate and personal. It shapes our life experience at pivotal moments. The first bralettes for budding teens. The zone for experimentation when we start to understand and offer up our bodies. I'd long been an aficionado of lacy matching sets until pregnancy skewed my drawers. As soon as I finished breastfeeding I went to Selfridges and spent my statutory maternity pay on fancy bras. It was a reclaiming of sorts, and for no one apart from me: "I'm taking these back and covering them in lace." I know fashion editors who are swathed in navy knits but sport Agent Provocateur underneath (the Joan is a favourite) at all times. Meanwhile, friends are aghast when I posit the idea of sexy knickers — "strictly sensible cotton only" comes back one response.
This "anything goes" aesthetic dominates lingerie now — and frankly it's about time. Post #MeToo, the era of heavily Photoshopped visions of "perfection" has been cancelled indefinitely. From Skims to M&S, women are front and centre in all their blemished, stretch-marked glory. We are a long way from Eva Herzigova's 1994 "Hello Boys" Wonderbra moment. "There's a lot of psychology behind it," says Jeannie Lee, head of womenswear buying at Selfridges. "Lingerie is so wrapped in your self-image and what you want to project and how you're feeling in that moment. There are more tribes, more niches and considerations manifesting into products now."
"We've seen a big increase in [sales of] non-wire bras, triangle bras and soft-cut bras," says Lucy Litwack, the chief executive of Coco de Mer. "But we've found as well a big increase in three-piece sets — your bra, knickers and suspenders, the more glamorous pieces." Net-a-porter has seen a similar buying trend: Libby Page, its senior market editor, says that "the demand for comfortable cotton lingerie pieces is equally matched by that for lace and tulle thongs and delicate soft-cup bras, which have seen a rise this season. Trending pieces include Skims's cotton triangle bralette, Coco de Mer's Muse Simone lace bra and Agent Provocateur's Zuri embroidered tulle thong."
Soozie Jenkinson, head of design at M&S, has coined a term for this modern take on lingerie styling: glasual. "It's the combination of glamorous looks with more casual styles," she says. "A couple of years ago it was very much about a more relaxed aesthetic. Then, if you rewind to when glamour was really on it, ten years ago, it was all about push-up bras, it was all about 'look at me', very bold, confident looks. But with the athleisure trend dominating outerwear, it didn't feel relevant to bring that back. So we're now looking at more glamorous, feminine pieces but through a modern lens.
