French Undressing

I have to share an excerpt from this month’s Conde Nast Traveler.  Writer Gully Wells explores the many lingerie boutiques of Paris and sets out to find out why the French (men & women) take lingerie so seriously. Turns out, the French consider underwear to be just as (if not more) important as outerwear.  

While I found lingerie’s important place in French culture fascinating, I thought their views on other culture’s feelings about the lovely lace & silk garments – namely Americans - even more interesting.

“Caché is also how Poupie Cadolle’s customers from the Persian Gulf spend most of their lives, except that under their shapeless burkas they are wearing the kind of underwear calculated to keep a man extremely happy. ‘These women have to be dedicated to pleasing their husbands,’ Madame Cadolle said as she showed me around her atelier on the rue St-Honoré. A cheerful woman in her mid-sixties, with bottle-blond hair and a reassuringly ample figure, she is the fifth generation of her family to run the business, and although she has a small boutique around the corner on the rue Cambon, most of her work is couture.”

“ ‘The Russians and the Arabs, they are the most extravagant. The French are the most demanding—they will spend half an hour just choosing the lace trimming for a bra. And the Americans? 
It’s taken me twenty years to understand what American women mean by ‘special occasions.  They tell me that they have two sets of underwear: plain for everyday and a few prettier pieces for these strange special occasions. Incredible.’ And if American women are odd, the men are even odder. ‘They sit in that chair, hidden behind the Herald Tribune, with zero interest in what their wives are choosing. And by the way, they always go for the most conservative designs—nude silk with hardly any lace. Then when it comes time to pay, it is the woman who produces her credit card! Can you imagine?’”

- Excerpt taken from Paris Underneath it All, Conde Nast Traveler, April 2012

Puritan Prude

Can I imagine? Yes, I can imagine.  I can’t even picture my husband willingly going shopping with me, never mind whipping out his credit card a la Richard Gere in Pretty Woman.  But, that’s just the problem, when I think of men, credit cards and lingerie, I immediately think of hookers.  I even tried to Google a few pictures of French lingerie and was nervous someone in my immediate vicinity would think I was looking at naughty websites and get me kicked out of the hotel lobby I was writing in. 

Check out a few sumptuous underthings at Laurela.com and get ready to be motivated to visit a proper lingerie shop.  Maybe its time we stopped buying our underwear off the clearance rack at TJ Maxx.   

Seductive lingerie by Simone Perele

Simone Perele lingerie

Lingerie by Lise Charmel