Today it would scarcely rate a glance, that sort of exposure having lost its taint back in the day when Madonna was a girl.
If Miss Lucarelli had worn her corset outside her shirt, it would have established her as a paragon of hip, a role model for the throngs of women who buy lingerie for show.
Lingerie has become “a display piece”, says Stephanie Solomon, Bloomingdale’s fashion director. Corsets, panties and camisoles are as extravagant in their design, and as coveted, as Louboutin platforms or a YSL tote, and US research shows the category known quaintly as intimate apparel has climbed to the top of women’s shopping lists.
Pushing lingerie into a more public role are design and construction that are all but indistinguishable from swimwear or even evening wear. Choosing lingerie “is about what makes you look good, but also what looks good with or through your clothing”, said Monica Mitro, a spokeswoman for Victoria’s Secret . “Women are incorporating underwear as part of their outfit.”
Such a notion may have been subversive in the heyday of New Wave acts like Blondie, Cyndi Lauper or the youthful Madonna, “when bras suddenly became sportswear”, says David Wolfe, the creative director of the Doneger Group, which forecasts fashion and retail trends. Today the concept has gone mainstream, Wolfe adds, confiding that he was nonetheless taken aback during a recent visit to the Mall of America outside Minneapolis at the sight of dozens of women, young and not-so-young, sunning themselves poolside at his hotel, wearing Victoria’s Secret moulded bras.
In Hidden Underneath: A History of Lingerie (Assouline, 2005), Farid Chenoune argues that some underclothes gain respectability once they lose their original function as sexy, curve-enhancing second skins. Think of the merry widow, which was largely discarded as a body-shaper in the ’60s but was resurrected as a fashion item in the ’70s and ’80s. Stripped of their erotic charge, these garments are “elevated to acceptability as part of the visible wardrobe”, she wrote.
Which helps to explain why the slip, a modest cover-up that once doubled as a symbol of seduction, is no more steamy or subversive to a modern eye than knee socks.
“Women are wearing lingerie to be seen under pretty chiffon blouses and transparent layers,” said Jo Jeffery, spokesman for lingerie website Figleaves. “They blur the line between a bra and outerwear.” — © (2007) The New York Times
