Disclosure: This blog post contains affiliate links. Sometimes, I worry the brief descriptive portion of these guides can get a little repetitive. The general idea of all our shopping guides is, “I like this, and I think you might like it too,” but I don’t feel like I can just say and skip to the end (or can I?). At any rate, for this Valentine’s Day Lingerie Shopping Guide, I […]
Last year, I skipped doing the Valentine’s Day Shopping Guides. Between moving to California, traveling to the Salon International de la Lingerie in Paris, and then attending Curve in New York, I just felt too overwhelmed. But I realized, right around the time I usually would have been writing the guides, that I missed doing them.
I first met one of the founders of Department of Curiosities at the Oxford Conference of Corsetry. Gerry Quinton, under the label Morua Corsetry & Couture, actually designed one of my favorite pieces – a cream overbust corset with golden stars made of fragmented glass. I was honestly delighted when I first heard the news of her new lingerie label. Corsetry is a bit of niche area, inaccessible and intimidating to many. Loungewear on the other hand…well, who doesn’t want some of that?
Here it is: the finale, the coup de grâce, the closer to 2016. Speaking personally as Editor in Chief for a moment, I take our best lingerie brands of the year post very seriously. I start making notes on certain companies as early as January, “checking in” on them, so to speak, throughout the year.
The visual story of lingerie is everything, and a brand’s lookbook is one of the single most effective ways of transmitting that story. From a lookbook, you can learn if a brand is contemporary or traditional, luxury or inexpensive, French-inspired or American-influenced. A good lookbook conveys a brand’s identity, and it’s no exaggeration to say it can make or break a label.
