Retro style is successfully regaining its positions on the fashion markets and in various designers’ collections. What wonderful news for those who likes to look for vintage clothes on the sales and in special shops. This is the way to look “up-to-fashion” without destroying the budget. This also the way to show finally your personality, to become a “bright spot” in the colourless crowd.  

This tendency didn’t pass by the underwear industry as well. The most well-known designers such all over the world as Roberto Cavalli, Nina Richi, Lise Chanel, Calvin Kein payed thei attention to thee changes and reflected them in new collections. The greatest peculiarity of retro women’s underwear is the combination of the most different directions – femininity and sexuality from one hand and female’s intention to freedom and relaxedness. It seems that designers draw inspiration in various epochs from the strict and chaste Middle Ages to the last decades of the previous century.

The collections are mark with the sign of unsurpassed femininity and special luxury taste. Luxury for the privileged. Eccentric spirit of  Biba times prevails this season as  well – plenty of flowers and ornamental elements, velvet and devore velvet, satin and precious accessories, hand processing.  

Colours

Perceiving “lives’ in the black colour. The new look for it is less provocative, more womanlike and refined, leaves the space for imagination. The lightest colours are – blue and green, “sandy” – pastel pink, exuberant yellow and pink. Various prints – spots, flowers – return us to the middle of the 20 century remaining about those nice, smart and sunny-souls women who wan the war against casualness and grey workaday routine.  

Silhouette

Tender brassiers without “bones” makes the breast look naturally, mini shorts, strings but now with higher line gains a firm position. In a corset retro style gets a new form thanks to skittish details, which makes it more sexual and splendid. Such elements like corsets and “low dresses’’ decorated with fur and plumes add to lingerie a kind of stylishness and smartness. More close models create a sort of coquetry by opening some parts of the body while veiling the others. They seem to tell us “you still have something interesting to discover”.

Cloth

Cotton, the extravagant mixture of knitted and woven ornament, ultra-light flounce tells about courageous designers’ solutions. Women’s silk long underwear al in all remains the most attractive attribute of the clothes preserving the spirit of romance and mystery, refinement and moral freedom at the same time.            

The world is becoming more open – different countries share its cultures, customs, traditions and fashion tendencies. This fact touches the sphere of underwear as well.

The main tendency of the coming season - displays in Melting moat, intermixture of styles and silhouettes, brave combinations. This actually was caused by the general interest to unique, exclusive and splendid items.

To cater for customers’ requests producers have expended the assortment range by adding accessories and transforming lines, still being loyal to conventional shapes and popular styles.

Three Prior Rules

• Searching for comfort and natural materials, fibres with specific processing.
• Women prefer had-made lingerie – it shows that everybody wants to be unique and unsurpassed.
• Casual style is dominant over other ones in all kinds of activities.

Shapes

Retro-stylishness and femininity is coming back. More covering underwear is in favoure. Frill and flounce panties, body, garters belts are most popular – and all these certainly made from rich and sparkling materials.

Thanks for the clothes of new generation the tightening effect comes into fashion nowadays. The belts which make the waist look more refined become the inseparable accessories. In general new season lingerie – is a kind of nostalgia for the past.

Bio-material

New bio-material invention is a kind of salvation to one of the current problems – ecology and as a result own health care. Producer more and more often turns to such natural resources as wood, seaweed and etc. The real star of the coming season has become bamboo, supplied for many collections.

Casual Style

The number of sports underwear collections is constantly increasing from season to season that the shows growing interest to the cultures of different countries.

Tet-a-tet talk

Romantic lingerie of all the shapes and coloures. Different variants of blue and flesh colours. Exuberant blue makes the theme more dynamic. Tulle, laces and other refined materials are used for worked out details.

Initiative

Refined lingerie in fresh colours. Plenty of feminine accessories such as jabo. This is a sexy tendency with abundance of embroidery and in exuberant red colours.

Manigance

One of the most important tendencies of this season – is femininity. Damp sometimes dark colours, unusual shapes intriguing clothes are used. The main nuance is sparkling which was loaned from Japanese and Chinese cultures.

Instinct

The youth lingerie with strong colour combinations for example red and black or blue. There are lots of icon drawings still natural drawings, refined and splendid, exist as well. Modern clothes are used combined with new technologies. Design, colour, embroidery, modern shapes and dynamic are perfectly intermixed.

The findings of questionnaire

Social polls help to describe the colossal sports textile industry market of France, estimated at 8.5 billion euro for FPS and 9.1 billion euro for Cetelem.

The average family may spend 360 euro on this purpose, in Italy this figure is a bit lower – 252 euro. 42 million of people in France go in for ports which make up nearly 84% of the French. Nevertheless according to Eurostaf, for sports textile industry it’s rather difficult to succeed due to the fact that its activities can not be covered only by the aspect of fashion.

Who “holds” the market?

Nowadays sports fashion is at the disposal of several well-known enterprises: the leading sports brands of universal profile( Nike, Puma, Adidas), trade brands for active leisure(Aigle, Quiksilver, Billabong), fashion clothes brands(Hugo Boss, Prada, Tommy Hilfiger) and technological brands(Thuasne Sport).

Sport may favour the development of underwear industry. The situation on the underwear market is dynamic, it is expanding, for the underwear purchases stand for 6.3% of textile goods total amount in comparison with 5.9% in 2000. Taking this in account the sports market has nice prospects and the young will contribute to it greatly. Still there are lots of points to consider.

The Expert’s Opinion

Celin Luiobo, who has been working in the field of sports underwear industry for 10 years already, remarks that in 1998 only 3 or 4 of 6 trade brands were world-wild known. Today we can count 40 or 50 brands which specialize on sports underwear or offer underwear series without intermediary. She notices that not later than 10 years ago women used to wear only classical bras and were not aware of the danger of traumatism and breast aging caused by improperly selected bra. Nowadays trade brands provide women useful information and stand for the necessity of special underwear for sporting activities.

Innovations

Anita – underwear producing enterprise – has gained popularity on the sportive markets due to its catering for women’s requirements to bandage the breast and variety of sizes provided (even sorting models range from A to I). It also pays attention underwear appearance and comfort. The choice of a woman will be driven by the sum of these criteria. Pier Steiner admitted that they usually make 230 draft samples to create one particular model. For practical purpose Anita has work with 200 women of various figures and ages, who were testing different underwear samples during the trial period according to diverse criteria including operating characteristics.

The most current question for the sports underwear industry is the question of marketing which is now under discussion among the professionals.