Lockdowns and the shift towards working from home have been a boon for comfort dressing, and by extension the braless movement. But the underwear industry was already having a rough 2020 pre-pandemic.
It’s 2020, and there is a revolution brewing in our underwear drawers.
Lingerie and shapewear were once hyper-sexed industries which catered to the narrow male gaze, although in recent years, major companies have faced reckonings over their antiquated views on feminine sexuality. Others have been criticised for neglecting plus- sized women, or not accounting for diverse skin tones when labelling undergarments ‘nude’.
Inclusion and female pleasure are at last having a moment, and woe betide anyone who refuses to get on board. Take once-dominant Victoria’s Secret as a cautionary tale. Long chastised for its limited beauty standards, former president Ed Razek’s discriminatory and objectifying remarks (he told Vogue in 2018 that trans and plus-sized models would not be cast in VS’s shows “because the show is a fantasy” and there was “no interest” in seeing them included) saw its iconic, annual runway extravaganza retired in November.
VS’s resistance to changing times also translated into a 7% quarterly sales drop by 2019’s end, with market share having plummeted from 31.7% in 2013 to 24% in 2018. Ol’ Vicky’s secret is out: the brand and its outmoded peers are dying because women do not vibe with one-dimensional cheesecake fantasies any longer.
Fortunately, a slew of forward-thinking young brands are answering calls for an inclusive, female-friendly (and in some cases, non-binary and male-friendly too) industry makeover. Labels including Nubian Skin and Lively — the latter founded by an ex-VS exec — flip the script and prioritise wearer over viewer, providing functional pieces which situate comfort as the most luxurious pleasure of all. Gone are the extraneous padding and assorted flourishes designed to make an erotic spectacle of the bust, in favour of a lightweight, minimally structured wearing experience.
Meanwhile, companies such as Aerie, Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty, and transgender-focused GI Collection are winning hearts with their diverse campaigns and runways, which place different body shapes, ethnicities, and gender identities on overdue equal footing.
The lingerie world finds itself at a tipping point more precarious than those of a 1940s bullet bra. A critical mass of women has had enough of placing others’ (namely heterosexual men’s) fulfilment before their own. The trade’s current upheavals go far beyond construction, fit, or colour, although backlash often originates in such surface concerns. Instead, they speak to expanding popular ideas of what it means to be sexy.
That undergarments and sex are intertwined in the public imagination is nothing new. “Lingerie is so intimate, only certain people you trust get to see it”, says Kate Low, creator of Singaporean lingerie label Perk by Kate. “It is vulnerability and sensuality wrapped in one package”. Precious little in traditional lingerie advertising, however, has reflected this.
Wonderbra’s 1994 billboard of Eva Herzigova, widely considered a watershed moment in advertising, featured the tagline “Hello boys”. Male gratification was undeniably front and centre. Since then, countless more torrid, yet tired ads have run: one memorable contribution from Victoria’s Secret encouraged shoppers to “dress your boyfriend’s floor”.
However, the slightly demeaning message — that heterosexual men’s validation is the end goal of lingerie (or indeed, womanhood) rather than a welcomed side effect of independent self-confidence — is clearly not resonating anymore.
Sexuality is both personal and social. It is healthy to desire as much as we wish to be desired. When the dialogue becomes too one-sided and objectifying, as was the case in lingerie for decades, reprisal is inevitable. Simply put: VS’s recent, headline-making gaffes were merely the straw which broke the sexy camel’s back.
Yet not everyone is benefiting equally from lingerie’s progressive, empowering tilt. Groups which have typically been labelled ‘undesirable’ and side-lined, such as plus-sized women and women with flat chests, still grapple with discrimination and erasure.
Ratnadevi Manokaran, co-founder of Singaporean plus-size retailer The Curve Cult, shared that beyond shortage of quality options, bra shopping frequently invites upsetting, body- shaming comments. In some circles, large breasts are linked with hypersexuality, even when fully clothed. “Once, a smaller girl and I were wearing the same outfit, but only I received feedback from friends and family about looking ‘vulgar’”
On the opposite end of the spectrum, things aren’t necessarily better. Low recounts that she founded Perk by Kate — whose sizes run from 30A to 40B — partially out of exasperation, as “salespeople used to insist that smaller-sized women try on bras whose cups were just too big for them”. Others, this 36AA cup-wearing writer included, are advised to go entirely braless, and companies selling AA or AAA cup sizes remain so rare that they’re reported on as if they were unicorn sightings.
Even Savage x Fenty, which has earned near-unanimous praise from press and consumers alike, can’t help making the occasional misstep. Rihanna’s lingerie venture came under fire for design differences between ‘straight’ and plus sizes in its 2019 Valentine’s Day collection, with plus-size activists suggesting that the aesthetic watering-down was motivated by laziness rather than technical constraints.
Scaling the diversity learning curve is a messy work-in-progress, even for lingerie’s darling disruptors, but this doesn’t invalidate the genuinely inclusive mission statements behind them.
“You belong in these pieces,” Rihanna told viewers of Savage x Fenty’s latest show in September 2019: “You, me, trans women, women of all sizes, paraplegic women, all women are important women! All women belong here.” The gospel has finally been received, loud and clear: nobody and no body deserves to feel unseen or unappreciated.
This story was originally featured in A Magazine, published by Apical Media.
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