Underwear as art, lingerie as work-wear, how do you work your underwear?

There’s a theme to this week’s blog - the story of how underwear emerges into outerwear.

Pokemon panties

First, the 20th anniversary of the annoyingly cute Pikachu is being celebrated in Japan with a licensed underwear range including shorts, underpants, a cap (?) and a sleep mask … more than anything else this leaves us asking questions about the habits of the Japanese - we sort of get the sleep mask but underwear lines don’t usually include caps. The mind boggles as it so often does when exploring the peculiar world of the Japanese psyche.

Underwear of the stars

Although to be fair, most of us have some habits that we’d rather not talk about. You know what we mean, the things you do in your scanties that you’d never reveal to the world. Then again, others of us spend a lot of our time making sure the world knows about our lingerie. Instagram appears to have been just about invented for women to appear in their undies. As an example ….while people are still talking about Kim Kardashian’s lingerie dress which totally overshadowed whoever’s wedding she actually wore it too, here at lingerie.co.uk we’ve been quietly fascinated by a different news story - Mariah Carey’s pizza-making outfit. Oh yes, lingerie and pizza making (not eating) is a thing now.

Should you feel the need to cook in your robe, we’ve picked out two that we think fit the bill being as tasty as the food you’ll be producing. First up, Diki’sMimi nightdress and robe, made to order out of gorgeous lace, this is an outfit that you won’t want to splash tomato sauce on - just gorgeous for those red hot days when you don’t want to get dressed too early though. Second, for cooler weather and those gothic midnight feasts, Liliana Casanova offers the stunning Fontainebleaudressing gown, also made to order but featuring a waterfall of mousseline silk and toning lace, this is a flattering garment for all.

Underwear as art

And the final thing we’re talking about this week is a new Zoe Buckman show (in LA sadly so we won’t get to see it in the flesh) in which she has embroidered the lyrics of two rap stars - Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur - on vintage underwear to explore the dichotomy between attitudes to women in the media. The show, as usual, is staggeringly beautiful with lacy panties, flowery robes and even stockings displayed bearing lines like “I swear I’ll never call you bitch again” and “Ain’t that a slut, hell yeah, she even take it in the butt” to reveal the tension between empowerment and disenfranchisement, often in the same song. You can find details of the show online and it’s a fascinating tour through the kinds of language and objectification that many women experience every day, and the range of messages received by women about their places in the world, male expectation, the power of labelling and even the nature of garments to enhance, constrain and carry information about the wearer and what is expected of them.