Respectful, resourceful, right sized lingerie

Royal disrespect

Heidi Klum has got her knickers in a twist. When she took over the lingerie line founded by Elle Macpherson in partnership with New Zealand based brand, Bendon she certainly didn’t expect to be defending herself against publicity stunts that she considers tacky. However, when she was in London recently to promote the underwear line, she discovered that three models had been photographed in the undies she designed, outside Buckingham Palace.She tweeted very frankly, if not with the best of spelling, ‘Nearly fell of my chair when I saw this. Who did this??? Not me!!! #Not Cool.’

We agree, not cool, and not only is it not okay to use a public space to promote your product without permission and without consideration for the rights and preferences of those around you, the poor models look both frozen and terrified. Not the positive, powerful image of great lingerie on great women that we’d want to portray for sure.

Feminist follicles

On the other hand, Neon Moon isn’t quite working for us either. We love the idea, and we’re all in favour of new underwear lines, but the approach of Hayat Rachi, founder of Neon Moon, has us a little puzzled. Good for her in launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund her feminist lingerie project. Good for her in having a clear picture of what she wants to achieve - filling a gap in the market that she defines as underwear that works ‘around the body, instead of the other way around’ although we’re not too sure what that means.

But Rachi is offering a quite peculiar reward for the people who fund her project; she will dye her armpit hair whatever colour the funder chooses, if they provide £200 in funding, and she’ll take photos to prove it. Um … armpit hair choice is feminist, we get that but why is dying armpit hair and taking photos to send to people feminist? Is there something we’re missing here?

Bold brunettes make more money

Or at least they do for lingerie manufacturers, according to a survey by a New York based lingerie start-up … it must be the time of year for start-ups! The survey is limited in scope to TV ads shown in the USA and that might not be representative of the world as a whole, but what was discovered is fascinating. Given three adverts: one with blonde models, one with a plus size brunette and one with several ‘standard size’ brunettes, the one that did best was the advertisement featuring a generously proportioned brunette - in fact she outsold the blondes by a factor of four to one!

At lingerie.co.uk We like to celebrate all sizes, shapes and colours, definitions, choices and desires, and we’re proud to offer lingerie that works for every need, situation and preference. For example our G-World Lingerie babydoll looks great on every body - blonde, brunette, redhead and whatever the size. 

Underwear as weaponry, art and stolen goods - a weird week in lingerie!

Stolen underwear collection

Shiori Pike is known as a photograph of lingerie and the blogger ‘My Lingerie Addiction’ although it’s been a while since she was blogging actively. Her photographic studio in Richmond, Australia, was broken into last Friday, and priceless lingerie was stolen.

It seems like a planned job, as the thieves covered the surveillance camera before entering the upstairs building and ransacking it. Ms Pike was originally not particularly concerned about the break in because she keeps no electronic equipment in the studio but it turned out that the place had been ransacked and a museum quality collection of lingerie had been stolen. Shiori, who has her own lingerie line, also called Shiori, has appealed for people to check for pieces that might be from her collection being sold online. The theft has had international ripples, as Dita Von Teese reached out to Shiori on Instagram to say how sorry she was to hear about the burglary.

Isis recruiters ask for underwear

One of the saddest recent stories is of the three young girls who flew to Syria from the UK to join the so called Islamic State. For most of us this is inconceivable and yet recent revelations about how they may have been groomed makes it clear that under the claims made by ISIS, there’s a current of sexual exploitation that is lurid and profoundly un-Islamic. 

How do we know this? Well, A TV reporter managed to convince a male recruiter for ISIS that she was a fifteen-year-old girl. He made contact with her on social media and told her that she didn’t need to speak Arabic as there were plenty of British ‘bros’ in Syria and then told her that she could stay with him until she became a child bride. He also told her that she should hurry up because girls were travelling out to Syria every day and in a final message when the supposed fifteen year old asked what she should pack, he told her ‘lingerie loool’. It’s a strange sidelight on the world of jihad.

Pimp your bra

An auction of 200 decorated bras talking place in New York will raise funds for the oldest breast cancer support hotline in the country. Our attention was caught by the welded bra designed by David Jones, made entirely of spoons and called ‘Appetite for Life’. Other bras in the collection include one designed by the granddaughter of Betty Boop’s creator, because her mother died of breast cancer when her daughter was just eleven years old.

We love the idea of bra pimping and we’ve been having a go ourselves. Of course most of us pimp our lingerie anyway with our choice of accessories, but taking it a step further and actually embellishing our underwear has been a revelation. Our tips, if you fancy this yourself, are to start with something simple and sheer - the Roza Frosa bra is ideal, especially as it has a matching brief or thong and hold ups to choose from. Then we’d suggest you pick a theme … we’ve had great success with wrapping animal print ribbons around bra straps, bedazzling our panties with rhinestones and attaching jewels to garters, but all three together would be too much of a mish-mash so pick one strong idea, colour or theme and run with it!