Summer lingerie - the silly season stories you couldn’t make up!

Theft of underwear

In Tennessee a man has been arrested for stealing lingerie. Nothing unusual in that, you may think, but the man, Christopher Wade, didn’t make off with a couple of thongs or slip some stockings into his back pocket - no, he was ambitious!

One night, just after midnight, he walked into a lingerie shop in Old Hickory and made off with an entire mannequin! In fact he failed to get the whole dummy into his truck, knocking her left arm off in the parking lot. When police tracked him to his home, Mr Wade was found to be in bed with the mannequin which was still wearing the lingerie he’d stolen it in. The dummy and underwear together are worth an estimated $5,000.

What boggled our minds there, amongst other things, is that lingerie stores are open until after midnight on a Sunday in Tennessee!

Bra sizes in animals

This really is a story that you couldn’t make up … a Japanese lingerie firm has decided to help its clients work out which bra cup size they require by creating a poster that reveals which animals weigh the same as breasts.

Yes, breast equivalence in animals. What’s most puzzling about the chart, to us, is that there is a clear sense in which the company believes A and B cup customers will be happy, as shown by smiling women with chipmunks and cockatiels as their breast weight equivalents while C to F cup sized women have downturned mouths … poor old F cup is also being half smothered by a giant Persian kitten, which might explain her miserable expression. It’s just bizarre.

Summer underwear trends - the not so silly season 

TickerTags is a clever monitoring system that follows tag trends such as treats and social media captions. And it’s produced some interesting data about how our lingerie trends are changing. So, for example, push-up bra mentions are down 35% while bralette tags in the social media have risen 14% in the first six months of the year. The claim is that this is a result of the Athleisure phenomenon which is the process of turning sportswear into daywear and the tendencies to seek comfortable clothing that permits athletic activity at all times.  Bralettes are also ‘peek’ clothing, which looks great when emerging from outerwear.

We’re pretty interested in this statistic … and we wonder whether it’s less to do with changes in lingerie purchasing or interests (we haven’t noticed any decline in push-up bra sales) but something to do with the age of people who use social media and are willing to talk about/selfie themselves in their undies. Perhaps it’s younger women (who are more used to bralettes) who use the tag more on social media? Anyway, we think the rise of the bralette is a wonderful thing and we’d like to bring the Coquette lace bralette to your attention … it’s a gorgeous little lingerie item at pocket money prices and one sizes fits pretty well everyone from chipmunk to Persian kitten sizes!

Soft, strong and very very long … underwear, not toilet roll!

Let’s start with the strong - three British female athletes have taken part in a lingerie shoot to ‘empower young women’. The three, Bryony Shaw (windsurfer), Amber Hill (skeet shooter) and Paralympic long jumper Stefanie Reid, are involved in a campaign to keep girls doing sport after the age of 13. Research has shown that this is the key age at which girls often give up sports and that they do so because of issues around their bodies.

The aim of the photographs is to reveal how strong and powerful bodies are also beautiful and to encourage long women not to feel ashamed of being physically strong. Bryony Shaw, a bronze medallist in Beijing an the current European champion says act she hid her body at school because she was worried other children would say she looked like a boy.

While we think that the intention is good, we can’t help feeling that photographs of three strong and superbly fit young women are unlikely to achieve the stated aim. While fearing getting too muscular might demotivate some teenage girls from sporting exercise, we think that many more young women feel they are too fat and too ‘flabby’ to reveal their figures - and being shown how toned and slim female athletes can be won’t do much for their self image. If one of the three had been from a different sport, perhaps shot-putting or the hammer, it might have given a wider range of body types with which more of us could have identified.

We’re very taken with Amber Hill’s outfit in this shoot though … we went hunting through our own stock to see what would look just as good on somebody who wasn’t a sporting superstar and we came up with the Charlotte set with its lovely half bra which is flattering in all sizes.

So, soft and long … how to conserve your underwear

Underwear is always soft when we get it - utterly wonderful against the skin, but all too often we find that after a while it’s no longer so soft and doesn’t always last as long as we’d like. So what can we do to preserve the quality and length of our new lingerie?

Rotate your undies

Both bras and knickers need a regular rest - this is because the elastic in underwear needs a day or so to get back to its designed shape - if you wear something and then give it a couple of days off duty, it will hold its shape better for longer.

 Wash with care

Use gentle detergent, preferably a liquid wash. Some powders can contain agents that are too aggressive for the fragile fabrics from which lingerie is made and biological washes can contain strong chemicals that dry out elastic and flatten the gentle weave of silks and satins. Hand washing is also highly recommended - but if you do need to machine wash, close clasps on suspenders and hook up bras before putting them in a lingerie bag or even a cotton pillowcase before putting them in the washing machine. This ensures that your underwear isn’t beaten about by other garments and that hooks and clasps don’t catch on other fabrics and get stretched.

Dry outdoors

Wherever possible line dry your lingerie - tumble drying destroys the careful construction of underwear, especially where underwires are concerned and can degrade elasticated areas of the garment causing sags that make it less nice to wear.

The ultimate bespoke, the cost of lingerie and empowering underwear - end of the month round up from www.lingerie.co.uk

So you want a perfectly fitted bra? Our first two stories might help …

Technology and underwear

Jess Haughton, a fashion student from Nottingham Trent Uni, has used the latest technological developments to get that perfect fit - 3D printed lingerie!

While Jess’s undies are currently only part of her design course, there’s every likelihood that such garments will be readily available online in the near future. The limiting factor is getting the right measurements, usually done with a scanner, but once our home computers or phones can be equipped with an app that serves as an adequate scanner, it should be easy to get 3D printed underwear delivered to us at home.  The Haughton garments use stretch silicone, which offers a smoother outward profile than almost any other fabric and is considered to be very durable, so the investment could be a long term one. Attractive to those women who stay the same size, but perhaps not so thrilling for those whose bust size fluctuates.

When pennies count - and why to spend them on lingerie!

On the other hand, Cora Haddington, founder of Lingerie Addict, has been pointing out that we may under-invest in our choices, failing to recognise that we’re unsatisfied in our purchases because we’ve neglected to understand the business process being lingerie construction. Business Insider India chose to run her tweets as an editorial story - not the first time that underwear has made headlines, but more often on the scandal pages than the business ones!

 Loving your underwear

Once again that online stalwart, Bustle, has been a talking point in our office. This month it’s a story about how underwear empowers and explores how to choose underwear, who it should be worn for and the value of finding a brand that fits with your chosen identity and lifestyle.

As a result, we’ve all been talking about our favourite mood-improving underwear. For one of us it was their first ‘training bra’, for another it was investing in proper silk stockings for work and for a third, opting to buy a made-to-orderJane Woolwich basque for her second wedding, as a secret treat to herself and her husband-to-be, completely hidden under her ‘sensible’ second time around register office wedding dress!

If you have an empowering underwear story we’d love to hear it …