Beyoncé being the spiritual leader of 21st-century womankind – I lose track of whether the paperwork has been ratified by the ladies wing of the papal conclave, but I think we can take it as read – when she makes an announcement, the world listens.
She made an announcement last week. You may have heard about it already. Being pregnant with twins was part of it, but it is another matter that concerns us here. In an aubergine bra and powder-blue knickers, she effectively pronounced the death of matching lingerie, dropping the bomb in the white-hot centre of the lingerie market a fortnight before Valentine’s Day. In an image with psychedelic arthouse styling calculated for maximum global reach, Beyoncé chose underwear with top and bottom halves in different colours, different styles, and different labels.
This is nothing to do with getting caught without matching underwear. It is about a woman so alpha that she will headline Coachella while six months pregnant with twins choosing clashing over matching in a picture that has received 10 million likes to date. Although the caption was signed “The Carters”, the choice of bi-coloured underwear connects the shot to Beyoncé’s less romantically harmonious visual message from last year, Lemonade, in being a very female vision. To put it bluntly: no way did Jay pick out this lingerie. The male understanding of “nice underwear” begins and ends with matching sets. This is the lingerie of the female gaze.
Beneath the deliberately loopy Pierre et Gilles vibe is the taste of a sophisticated fashion consumer at work. Aubergine with sky-blue is a modern classic, seen repeatedly at Phoebe Philo’s Céline, and a favourite of streetstyle stars who like to show off their taste chops. “It’s an unusual combination that always looks really great,” says Sarah Shotton, creative director of Agent Provocateur, where Beyoncé got that bra. “Someone knows what they are doing, combining those colours.” It is a “very editorial” image, as Selfridges’ Heather Gramston puts it.
Mismatched lingerie has gone aspirational. One of the success stories of Selfridges’ Body Studio is the Dutch brand LoveStories, which has seen a 45% rise in sales since last year. Its “perfect mismatch” sets include a leopardprint bra with green straps, sold with fuschia knickers for around £60. At Marks & Spencer, where 20 million bras and 60 million pairs of knickers are sold each year, lingerie chief Soozie Jenkinson says women are “creating individual combinations of underpinnings to reflect our moods and needs”.
First and foremost among those moods and needs is the simplest. “It comes down to busy lifestyles,” says Shotton. “I’ve been at AP for 17 years so I’ve got masses of underwear, including loads of matching sets, but the mornings are crazy and I really don’t always have time to be hunting for the right knickers. And anyway,” she continues, “it’s a bit cooler, isn’t it, not to match? When you’ve got a matching set it’s a bit like – ‘tada’!”
Matching lingerie feels dated in the Instagram age. The notion of a lacy total look, concealed Russian-doll-style under your clothes ready be revealed after the curtains are drawn, seems as outmoded as grape scissors and dance cards. Nobody bats an eyelid about skintight gym leggings in the supermarket. Pyjamas are worn in fashion’s front row. Nothing is secret any more. On social media, lingerie has become part of a styled look in unexpected ways: the other day I spotted a pair of fishnet tights pulled high at the waistband to be visible above jeans. Look beyond the corsages and Cosmopolitans that date her and Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, queen of the gaudy public bra-strap, is beginning to emerge as the godmother of the modern millennial for the way in which her look and her personality were essentially the same thing.
And even in the bedroom, we can’t escape the imagery of the modern fitness obsession. “I follow a lot of sportswomen on Instagram, and it’s striking how sexy the images are that they post of themselves training,” says Shotton. Gramston points out an Ultracor sports bra with patent straps, a bestseller at Selfridges that is equal parts Barry’s Bootcamp and Fifty Shades. The wobbly plunge of the push-up bra is being edged out by a high-necked style that borrows from the sports bra playbook. At Agent Provocateur, the Angelica crop-top black lace bra is doing brisk business. “It’s funny, because it was in before Christmas and it wasn’t selling at all, because we get a lot of men in then and they just didn’t get it. But now that it’s women shopping for themselves, they love it.”
