Longer, greyer and funnier – news from the lingerie universe

Vintage Christmas Lingerie Looks

The 1940s pin up look is totally hot this winter. With rolled hairstyles or sleek curls, a matte face and lots of sexy lipstick, this look works perfectly for lingerie and is also a great way to harmonise with your Christmas décor if you’ve gone for this year’s purple and/or silver themes, as the colours blend beautifully.

One problem with the ‘40s look is that the perfect foundation base on which the look is painted normally requires a heavy matte base, (Max Factor’s Pan Sticks, which were used in wartime movies, really were ‘slap’ – both dense and unnaturally pale for anything other than black and white films!) so to help you bring the look up-to-date, here’s our quick guide to vintage pin-up beauty:

• Dampen your front hair and roll it on big sponge rollers while you put your face on.
• Mac’s Prep and Prime is a perfect base – it is quite heavy feeling on the skin but gives a wonderful priming base for foundation – choose a neutral shade of foundation and apply it with a sponge or large brush, blending well into the hairline, over the natural eyebrows and the lips.
• Reshape your brows using brow pencil in a natural shade, brown for blondes, black for brunettes and focusing on the fine natural arch that was popular at the time, then cover your lids with a neutral beige shadow and add black liner – not too much of a cat’s eye look though, use the liner to define, not to alter the natural eye-line. Mascara was black, black, black, even for blondes, in the forties.
• Cheeks should be lightly brushed with a natural pink (rose) colour. Blush, at this time, was simply a hint of colour, and while you might think you don’t need it, your primer and matte base will leave you looking ghostly if you don’t give yourself a healthy hint of cheek glow.
• To get the wonderful matte lip colour that was so popular in the forties, the foundation that you blended over your lips make the perfect base – draw on the lip line you want using feathered strokes of a neutral lip pencil and fill in with your chosen lip colour, using a lip brush for a precision finish – alternatively use a lip stain but be sure you’ve tested it first as some ‘bleed’ out of the lip line after a while. Finish in either case with a lip-locking lipstick sealer for that perfect all night pout. We love matte red but it can be drying and overly harsh, especially for less than perfect smiles, so we’d suggest Shiseido’s Perfect Rouge Glowing Matte – a flattering red that doesn’t signpost poor skin or imperfect teeth.
• Set with translucent powder; the new mineral powders are perfect, on the T-zone only, using the same big brush that swept your foundation and blusher into place.
• Take your hair out of the rollers and it a little spritz of mousse or other moulding treatment and then part slightly to one side. If you have long hair, pull the back hair out of the way with a band, then lightly backcomb to ensure your look stays in place. Roll the hair up, over and back, pin, and give a good squirt of hairspray, repeat with the other side, then shimmy into your 1940s themed lingerie. We recommend seamed stockings, bullet bras and bold suspender belts like the Soir de Venise Waspie.
• Delight your partner! 

This year’s three must have stocking-filler sex toys

1. For ladies, the best lube around right now is Good Vibrations Please Cream – cutely described as eco-erotic, it’s all natural ingredients and works to add comfort and pleasure to even the most sensitive of female regions.

2. We love Cosmopolitan so when they recommended the We-Vibe 3 and we’d got over the idea that Nintendo had moved into sex toys, we tried it out. They weren’t wrong – it’s a couple-pleasing, bendy, powerful and deliciously structure dual play toy – not a throwaway price but we think it could become a classic addition to the repertoire of couples who like toy-play.

3. Top of our stocking though is Screaming O’s Vibrating Mascara wand – it looks like mascara, you could get it through an airport security searh as mascara, you can carry it in your handbag without fear, and yet it does the job. It really does the job! And when we say it’s in the top of our stocking, it’s really that tiny, but it doesn’t lack for power. We think it’s the most fun in a small package we’ve had all year!

Longer, greyer and funnier – news from the lingerie universe

 

Hair extensions

Cute and talented Daniel Radcliffe has been talking about his new role – Igor in the Frankenstein film also starring James McAvoy. And to do so, he’s shown off his hair extensions which he mistakenly, and chillingly, described as being ‘from a dead person’. Relax Daniel, hair extensions are cut from the heads of the living, not the deceased! Perhaps he was just staying in character – Igor, after all, is a bit of a fan of dead bodies.

 

So with even our favourite male actors going for extensions, we pondered the role of hair extensions in the bedroom. It certainly gives us options – we can change our looks very swiftly and for role play it can be great to have a clip in fringe, a la Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction or a mass of curly tresses to spill over a wasp waist corset for an Edwardian-themed evening of fun and frilly undies. Here are a couple of tips if you’re going to try clip-in hair extensions.

To keep clips firmly in place, even during bedroom romps, make sure you backcomb your own hair right at the root, which roughens the finish and keeps the clips locked in place. A tail comb or a teasing brush will really help the process. Remember that if you backcomb the hair directly above the extension it will help it blend in more naturally and if you’re using your extensions to make an updo, simply clip them in upside down – that way they are already travelling in the right direction to contribute to a feminine bun or messy chignon. 

If you have curly or wavy hair, damp it slightly with a spritz of water or setting lotion (yes, that stuff your granny used to use, it’s an excellent aid when working with hair extensions) and roll your hair onto some really big sponge rollers and allow to dry naturally. Whether your using human or synthetic hair, this process gives your own hair a better chance of blending into the extensions than trying to fit them into your hair in its natural state.

Hottest lingerie 

E L James has partnered with KappAhl from Sweden to produce lingerie based on the Fifty Shades Of Grey trilogy! It’s very classic and elegant, based on a black satin base with grey lace and flashes of scarlet. What we liked most about the whole line is that they used the gorgeous Signe Nordstrom to model the lingerie. Signe is no waif, and looks utterly gorgeous in the new line. If you’d like to invest in some grey undies for Christmas here are our recommendations: 

·              Best for brunettes – dark haired and dark skinned ladies can wear almost any shade of grey but this gorgeously feminine nightgown offers a stunning contrast with darker complexions

·              Best for blondes – sometimes grey can leave blondes looking washed out and very pale skin tones can even take on an unwelcome tinge of green against bluish greys – this scintillating teddy sparkles with light and flatters every shade of blonde through to pure silver

·              Best for redheads  - the dense grey tones of this elegantbustier make the most of red hair, and the black trim provides a dramatic contrast that draws attention to your curves

Hilariously sexy advert

Our biggest Christmas laugh and swoon are simultaneous this year – Aldi’s utterly giggle-making champagne advert has been the biggest hit in the office over the past week!

All that’s hot in the lingerie world …

Hot interviews

So, as if it wouldn’t be enough to have the iconic Kate Moss appearing in the even more iconic Playboy Bunny outfit on the front of the 60^th Anniversary issue of Playboy, she was interviewed by the uber-iconic Tom Jones!

Yes, the sexiest supermodel spoke to the sexiest ‘Voice’ and in the interview she revealed that she’d like to have dinner with people ‘with naughty stories to tell’ and that she can’t see why anybody would want to have their pictures taken with her. 

In the eighteen-page inner shoot, Kate gets almost naked and makes good use of the roguery offered by the famous bunny outfit. The thirty-nine year old looks absolutely stunning, and we’ve borrowed some of the tricks used in her photo-shoot to create our tips below that reveal how to make your lingerie even sexier.

Hot off the press

When every mum’s favourite, Olympic diver Tom Daley announced his relationship with a man on YouTube, he must have expected a mixed reaction, which is what he got. From our point of view, it doesn’t matter a bit who goes to bed with whom, as long as everybody’s happy, but we were also thrilled that Tom was able to share this information with all his fans and supporters instead of having to let the news trickle out as gossip. His message seems to have resonated with many; gay rights campaigning group Stonewall tweeted, “Moving and inspiring video from @TomDaley1994. A role model for thousands of other young people.”

Of course that’s one excuse for showing you Tom in all his glory, isn’t it?

Hot bedroom clothing

So, when the weather outside is frightful, it can be delightful to wrap yourself up in thermal long johns, but we think there’s a perfect compromise between the sheer hedonism of a grown-up bedroombunny outfit and the saggy comfort of a velour onesie! It’s important to remember that many of us don’t have total control over our bedroom time: crying kiddies, barking dogs or yowling cats, neighbours banging on doors to borrow milk or sugar etc. So our clothing has to work both as boudoir sensation and straight-laced nightwear. Taking Kate Moss as our inspiration we suggest the following ways to spice up a neutral outfit or tone down some spicy underwear:

·              Cuffs are super-sexy – on a bunny or kitten outfit they come as standard ,but to add va va voom to a standard corset or teddy, invest in a couple of cheap black bracelets and add your own details: studs work well for a dominatrix look or you might prefer a snowflake design for winter wear

·              A blush or flesh-coloured robe is an ideal cover up – it adds a neutral concealing effect if you’re wearing something racy and have to leave the bedroom for a domestic emergency but it’s not a passion deadener in itself, in fact, soft pink robes flatter the skin and make a lovely peekaboo contrast to the sexy underwear beneath

·              Bunny ears are great: cute and sexy, but definitely give the game away if you end up wearing them outside the bedroom! A cute alternative is a black lace headband on blonde hair, or a red velvet bow in darker hair … they give a hint of decadence without making it too obvious that you’re planning some horizontal games!