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.
As a lingerie designer, people often tell me my work sounds like a ‘dream job.’ An aura of fantasy and glamour surrounds the fashion industry. However, the reality is lingerie design can be pretty boring most of the time, with very little creativity involved at all.
One of our previous “Best of Lingerie” winners, Tisja Damen first caught our eye with intricate patchwork lingerie that was more akin textile art than intimates. I fell in love with their unique, directional approach, and I’ve been checking in on the brand ever sense. In a way, it’s almost harder when you debut with such a strong perspective. People expect brilliance, and that can be a difficult bar to achieve season after season. Fortunately for the lingerie world, Tisja Damen manages to clear it easily.
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.
