Underwear As Outerwear - Again

I guess this will happen to every fashion maven if they live long enough: those terrible fashions that you already hated the first time around will be recycled back again.

One of the latest fashion trends to resurface is the “innerwear as outerwear” craze. During Parish fashion week at the beginning of October, such notable fashion houses as Christian Dior broke out the bras - without anything over them.

Salacious? Probably. Useful marketing tool? Sure: many media outlets can’t turn down the chance at a picture of a half-naked woman. Wearable clothing? No.

Madonna is probably the first person to ever to dive into this trend - and she mostly did it on stage (where the rules are different). Kylie Minogue got into this too, but we’re talking about two people who crave the spotlight. (With our luck, Britney Spears will pick it up this time around).

While I think many women like attention, most of us prefer to get it without quite so much skin showing.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that lingerie can’t be sold from the runway. Obviously, many brands have done really well with runway shows: just consider Victoria’s Secret.

So, I checked for some current lingerie shows, just to see what other lingerie makers have on the catwalk. I found pictures from the recent JT 1 Lingerie Fashion Show on October 3rd in Cape Town, South Africa. The theme was “Midnight Hot”. Some bras were even shown as tops (like one polka-dot bra that actually looked quite cute paired with jeans).

Of course, if you are over 25 years old, you shouldn’t be caught dead like that.

Which brings me back to lingerie as something to wear to the disco or glamorous evening event: if even Victoria’s Secret is smart enough to keep bras as bras and outerwear as outerwear, it seems to me that there’s an advantage to wearing something under your outfit. It may be a little old-fashioned, but I think the biggest advantage is a little mystery - and something to surprise him with when the clothes come off.

Sources: Times Online; Victoria’s Secret