How Haute is Haute Couture?

April 26, 2016

When lingerie advertising got sexy

April 26, 2016

Fierce Fabulous French Women We Love

Part 18th century Lady Gaga, part Madame de Châtelet, De Stael was a fiercely fabulous French aristocrat who rocked the 18th century by championing women’s rights, religious tolerance, and intellectual freedom long they had landed squarely on our cultural map. She was political when women were supposed to be apolitical and was well-known for her salons with political radicals, artistes, and assorted literary iconoclasts. Her ideas so deeply challenged the status quo of her times that Napoleon itched to be rid of her. “I shall break her, I shall crush her,” he declared. “Let her keep quiet, it’s the wisest counsel she can take.”

November 25, 2015

Heritage

What We Wore and How We Wore It

This famous contact sheet by pioneering motion photographer Eadweard Muybridge shows the many layers of undergarments women wore in the late 1800s: pantalets, petticoats, bloomers, bustles, corsets, crinolines – getting dressed and undressed used to be “an operation to be repeated several times a day so that one’s outfit would always be appropriate for the circumstances,”...

October 22, 2015

Heritage

Dream Weavers: The Finer Things in Life are From Lyon

Like many of the finer things in life, silk has a sexy French history, and the city of Lyon is a big part of it. It all started back in the 15th century when, unhappy with the exorbitant costs of imported silk from Asia and Italy, King Louis XI established silk production in Lyon. A century later, the enterprising King Francis I secured Lyon as its French capital and the City of Silk was born.

August 31, 2015

Heritage

French Women to the Power of Three

January 04, 2016

Lingerie IQ

Barbara Lingerie: Your Best (French) Friend Forever

It’s an Old World French tale that sounds like a New World California reinvention story: In the 1930’s, an enterprising French astrologer named Charles Fossey, otherwise known as “The Burmese Fakir,” decides it’s time for a career reboot. With a robust social network of high-brow women, Fossey asks himself: What interests all women all over the world? The answer is simple: their bodies.

November 17, 2015

Lingerie IQ

Word Play: How Lingerie Came to America - Literally

Back when your great great grandmother was wearing bloomers, American women flocked to France to buy lingerie. This was in the 1800s when the word itself didn’t really exist in the American vocabulary. We Anglo-Saxons incorporated it into our English language as a stand-in for frilly, naughty undergarments (like we did with other French words too sexy or sassy for our Puritan ways.)

October 08, 2015

Lingerie IQ

Empreinte: How One French Man Changed the World for Full-Busted Women

Desperately seeking a D cup - and beyond...
Empreinte was inspired by the French song: “Je ne peux effacer l’empreinte du passé…”, a French turn-of-phrase which means “I cannot erase the trace of the past.”

August 21, 2015