Lingerie Trend Favors Silks and Satins That Sometimes Show
Lingerie has had more assumed names than a fugitive on the lam. For a while, the term foundations was a mainstay, but it went out with whalebones. Then ladies’ lingerie lost favor when the term ladies started sounding sexist and got traded in for women.
Most recently, intimate apparel has fallen on hard times, because bras and bikinis aren’t considered particularly private parts of a wardrobe anymore.
“It’s the silliest expression of them all,” designer Josie Natori says. She still refers to hers as the lingerie business.
Takes a Liberal Approach
Now there is another alias to consider-- innerwear. More than describing a garment’s cut or color, it is a new-fangled phrase for a liberal approach to underwear.
“Multipurpose garments, to keep hidden, or to let peek out from under a blouse or jacket, or to use as something to sleep in,” is the way designer Fernando Sanchez describes them. He puts camisoles, teddies and full slips at the top of the innerwear list. For fall, this already established idea has led many designers to start producing somewhat more substantial versions of classics--camisoles, teddies and slips.
Lore Caulfield of Lore Lingerie is introducing a heavy, satin camisole with illusion neckline and capped, padded shoulders to wear under suit jackets or under sheer blouses.
Gail Epstein, who designs for Hanky Panky, predicts that lingerie-like bustiers will be a popular innerwear item, worn alone or under other garments. She is also showing a mid-calf-length slip with cotton-knit top and lace skirt to use as a slip or a dress. And her ankle-length, stretch-lace
leggings for wear under skirts and often with hip-length tops have been a big seller for about year.
Whatever people call their underwear these days, and however they choose to wear it, the latest styles are feminine shapes in silky fabrics. Sanchez says: “It’s lingerie in the most traditional, provocative way.”
Menswear cuts, vampy chorus-girl and androgynous looks have passed their prime.
Natori says the replacements are “opulent and ritzy.” She uses embroidery and appliques to achieve the effect. “The idea is to get away from androgyny and into fantasy,” she says.
The transition can cost plenty. With no effort to speak of, and little to show for it, a woman can spend $100 on a lingerie outfit. But reportedly, finances are being shuffled to accommodate the frills.
“Lingerie is part of a woman’s wardrobe, and she makes a budget for it,” says designer Caulfield, who works primarily with pure silk.
At Nordstrom, lingerie buyer Diane Khzouz says those dollars are spent on body-hugging innerwear this fall, to go with the new trend toward form fitting outerwear.
While Nordstrom and other local department stores maintain a wide selection of basic styles in their lingerie departments, a recent proliferation of lingerie specialty shops is broadening customers’ choices.
Of these, Victoria’s Secret, a division of the Limited, is currently leading the way with 122 stores nationwide (up from 78 last year), including 11 in Southern California.
The company’s president, Howard Gross, says his stores feature high styles at medium prices. He sells lace-trimmed silk camisole outfits for what he considers a modest $54.
Much of the stock is produced in the Orient, which helps keep costs down. And because he buys in volume, Gross says he can offer top American lingerie designer styles--sold exclusively under the store’s own label--at lower prices.
Another lingerie specialty chain is Private Moments, a division of Fredericks of Hollywood Inc. Six years ago the bulk of the business was done by mail order catalogue. Today there are 15 stores in Southern California (10 opened this year) and plans to open 75 new stores across the United States within the next five years, says store Vice President Cynthia Adams. They discontinued the Private Moments catalogue.
The stores carry styles by established and new designers whose own labels appear in the garment. But unlike department stores that tend to buy a larger percentage of a designer’s collection, Adams says she personally selects only the items from any designer’s collection that her customers are requesting at the time. Her “upscale customers who buy for value and quality and want unique things” currently want two kinds of teddies more than any other item. One is form fitted and tailored for day, the other is high cut or ruffled or plunging at the neckline for night.
A third variation within the lingerie-boutique boom, exemplified by the Lisa Norman Lingerie shops, features custom and special-order work. Norman says women bring her their old, beat-up bathrobes to be copied, sometimes six at a time, in fabrics she buys locally and in Europe.
Norman, who has a store in Santa Monica and one in Los Angeles, also designs a selection of her own lingerie and sleepwear, and she carries a wide range of top designer styles. But she says the fact that she still does alterations and fittings sets her stores apart.
Gross says the boom in the lingerie business proves at least one thing.
“It’s not so much that women are suddenly more fashion conscious about everything, including their intimate apparel,” he explains. “They’ve always been fashion conscious. It’s that there are better choices in lingerie at lower prices. Every woman deserves to sleep in silk. Now it’s affordable.”
He says the same may soon apply to men. Next on the agenda for his stores is a separate menswear department where one of the first items in stock will be silk boxer shorts.
