Online lingerie, replacement bodies and good clean fun - sizzling lingerie stories to beat the winter chill

Online underwear grows

It turns out that we’re not just a lingerie seller - we’re a key trend! At www.lingerie.co.uk we watch the global market with keen eyes to discover the latest trends in sexy lingerie, to test the claims of new underwear manufacturers and to explore what is the best in lingerie to bring to our customers. But sometimes we ourselves are subject to scrutiny and it turns out that a new report suggests that the global online lingerie market will grow 18.1% over the next five years. Given that the world economy is expected to grow by less that .5%, that’s a healthy statistic!

In addition, it seems many customers prefer buying lingerie online because they are intimidated by bricks and mortar stores or because they find it difficult to sort through the vast array of ‘real’ garments to find what suits them best. Instead they browse online where they can sort their searches by exact size, style and colour - which is why our site is searchable in a range of ways, to give you the best possible online lingerie shopping experience!

The body that’s replaced ‘The Body’…

… is Heidi Klum. It’s actually a great and sad day, for Bendon, the Australian underwear brand, which has had a quarter century association with Elle Macpherson, because in choosing their new ‘face of’ they’ve gone for 41-year-old Heidi, not some 19-year-old sizzler. Nothing wrong with 19-year-old sizzlers, of course, but what Bendon seem to recognise is that most lingerie is sold to, or bought for, more mature women, with a real sense of what works for them, and what they like.

Klum, who is best known for Project Runway, is absolutely stunning in the new Bendon range and reveals just how important confidence can be to a good boudoir photograph. We loved the elegance of the grey and pink bra that debuts for the line and whilst Heidi is a blonde, it’s one of those colour combinations that works for everybody from the palest-skinned red-head through to olive and deep coffee skintones. Browse the www.lingerie.co.uk selection of similar colour ranges to find something that will rock this look for you!

Getting dirty to get clean

Saskatoon is noted for its long cold winters, but one local entrepreneur has found a new way to warm things up - Emily Kempin has established a lingerie cleaning service. No, not somebody to hand-wash your skimpies, but a cleaner who comes and removes your dirt whilst wearing underwear. Okay, it’s not a new idea, as our picture from “MadMen” shows, but it’s a fun one!

Called Dirty Business, the cleaners work for $200 per hour, which is considerably above the going charlady rate for Saskatoon, and are provided with minders who ensure that the housemaids get to tidy up without any inappropriate touching or other intrusive behaviour, although the clients are allowed to take pictures and enjoy some ‘playful banter’.

Hmm … would our Head Maid costume meet with the approval of Saskatoon’s lingerie-cleaners, I wonder?

Red hot Christmas trees, hot under the collar lingerie adverts and rising stars in the underwear world - our week in lingerie!

Christmas tree lingerie

No, not the kind of undies that you find beneath the tree but actual tree underwear. Ever since Eartha Kitt sang ‘Santa Baby’ there’s been something quite sexy about Christmas … but that underlying sensuality has been made overt by a French company which is using discarded Christmas trees to create sexy undies.

Using an enzyme solution, pine trees, including their needles, are turned into a silky fabric that is then dyed with low irritant dyes to ensure the lingerie is as skin friendly as possible. the company claims that the fabric absorbs around two and a half times more moisture than cotton, making steamy bedroom sessions more comfortable!

Allow us to be somewhat unconvinced. We heard similar claims for bamboo clothing a few years ago, and while bamboo has definitely turned out to be a new fabric that’s got some benefits, it has in no way replaced cotton. We can’t see ‘pine’ taking the place of old favourites like silk and satin any time soon, and it certainly doesn’t measure up to the incredible properties of technical fabrics like Lycra, which have revolutionised our lingerie drawers. So we’ll watch this innovation with interest, but we won’t be replacing our cotton bras or silk knickers with it any day soon!

Too much underwear for drivers

Motorists in Milan have been distracted by underwear adverts that will now be taken down. Belen Rodriguez is the model who features in the two advertisements on multi-storey billboards and her seductive poses have been criticised as creating ‘serious danger for vehicular circulation’, much to the annoyance of Belen herself. The model and TV star says she thinks the pictures are ‘sensual, but elegant’.

There’s no evidence that sexy adverts actually cause crashes, but an American study did find that roadside advertising with emotive words such as cash, fame, sex and win led to drivers speeding up whilst negatively charged words such as crash, loss, damage caused drivers to slow down.

We love Belen’s sexy underwear set and we think we actually have an even nicer black and white combo to offer - the Roza Ginewrapush-up bra is similarly coloured to Belen’s cute balcony bra but even more feminine - we’re certain you’ll discover it’s a traffic stopper!

Tories reveal new strategy - sex!

Jacqueline Gold has found a new home - the front bench of the House of Commons. She joined George Osborne and other Tory grandees this week, as the Chancellor launched an attack on Labour spending plants.

Miss Gold has a substantial fortune of her own, having turned the Ann Summers business into a successful party plan operation linking 150 shops to more than 7,000 party planners.