Retro Lingerie and Vintage Lingerie

These days the demand for retro lingerie otherwise known as vintage lingerie is taking our actual and virtual high streets by storm. Women of all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life are harking back to, or realising for the first time that body shapes and styles from this bygone era were not just retro attractive but highly practical and sensual too.

There is now a beautiful range of highly desirable and very stylish underwear on the market, designed with one thing in mind; to create an awesome, traffic stopping, head turning silhouette. Vintage lingerie and retro lingerie does this through the use of corsets, corselets, girdles, bullet bras and suspender belts, all inspired by designs from the 40's, 50's and 60's, from the war years, right through to the swinging sixties.

Retro and vintage style underwear allows you to create that super feminine shape, putting all the right curves in all the right places. Women are buying it for themselves and each other, men are buying it for their wives and girlfriends and some braver souls will admit to buying it for themselves.

Hollywood, the film industry, glossy magazines, carnivals, panto's and even gay pride can take some of the credit for bringing this style back into retro vogue. The actress Dita von Teese and film releases like Moulin Rouge and Cabaret can all claim their part in the role of restoring these great underwear fashions to the collective consciousness.

But what is it that has really re-ignited the passion for stylish, sexy and sophisticated underwear?

Is it that women want to feel like women again? For years, throughout the 70's, 80's and even into the early 90's, a woman's power struggle in the office, her desire to be heard outside the confines of the home, drove her to dress down, or rather, to dress up in trouser suits, carry briefcases and go to power lunches, hiding their femininity for fear of not being recognised in the workplace.

Now, thankfully, all that is changing, women have firmly established their roles, both at home and in the office. Many women in today's society hold high powered and responsible positions and they do so, with a femininity that is all their own. The power dresser has been swapped, hopefully forever, for the stylish, sexy, and beautifully curvaceous, powerful woman.

Corsets

In any retro about corsets and corsetry you are bound to come across the word cinching. Cinching is the act of pulling something in tightly, usually with straps or laces to achieve a tight but still comfortable fit. This is exactly what the corset does and in doing so, it helps to create a slimmer looking silhouette or body shape in the torso and waist area of the body.. Generally worn as an undergarment, though it can be (and often is) worn for show, it is traditionally made of stiffened material which is tightly laced to the torso and waist, in order to slim a woman's silhouette.