Shapewear, Meet Fashion
Ready-to-wear and lingerie companies add a fashionable spin to body-shaping underpinnings
Since Spanx added shapewear into the vocabulary of the mainstream market nine years ago—with endorsements from Oprah Winfrey and leading ladies on the red carpet—women have embraced the nude, black and white body stockings that trim down the waist and create a smooth, pantyline-free foundation under dresses, pants, skirts and tops.
Now, lingerie companies such as Cosabella and MMK Brands and ready-to-wear manufacturers such as Intimo Industry and Bordeaux are expanding their offerings to provide shapewear that blends sleek support and comfort with an added fashion twist.
The move could revive the category’s flattened sales. According to a study by Port Washington, N.Y.–based NPD Group, shapewear sales have declined over the past two years, with a 1.2 percent decline in unit sales from 2006 to 2007 and a negative 5.3 percent change in unit volume sold from 2007 to 2008. Adding a fashionable component and the versatility of innerwear that can be worn as ready-to-wear may inspire customers who already own the basic underpinnings to purchase again.
Shapewear only accounts for about 5 percent of Terry Treves’ business at her Fanny Wrappers lingerie store in San Luis Obispo, Calif. The majority of her customers—who range from college students to mothers of the-brides—view shapewear as a one-time purchase to wear under a special-occasion dress.
“It’s just not a fashion item,” Treves said. “In order to make it be what it’s supposed to be—smooth you, thin you, take the lumps and bumps out—it’s just really plain. It’s plain, nude, black, and price point [is important]—especially with the economy—more and more.” Plus, Treves continued,“very few people would wear them as a day-to-day function” because of the restricting fit. Technical twist
Intimo Industry President Paul Yang came into the category of shapewear through the door of ready-to-wear fashion. Yang, who previously worked as a fabric converter for about six years, started creating stretchy tube tops and camisoles in 2003, using the same tubular-knit technology that makes patterned hosiery and seamless shapewear.
Intimo’s designs, created by Vice President Steve Kang, tweak the template of basic tubular-knit camisoles by adding jacquard patterns, ribbing, ruching and mesh designs. The company’s Los Angeles headquarters hums with the sound of approximately 30 seamless knitting machines that can produce 400 to 500 basic camisoles or about 200 complex designs a day.
“Tubular garments have always been form-fitting and a great underpinning,” Yang said. “It wasn’t until Spanx really made a name for ’shapewear’ did we realize we were making fashionable shapewear.”
Yang’s designs have been sold as private-label programs to several publicly traded specialty store chains, and the garments are marketed as ready-to-wear camisoles, tops and leggings. At one of his client’s stores, which has a sexy image, Yang’s ribbed tube tops and camisoles are sold on the rack as camisoles that can be worn every day.
Last year, Yang started making adjustments to some of the fashion tops that would make them more effective as shapewear. The bust area fits more loosely and is the focus of design interest with flower patterns. The tension is graded throughout the midsection so that it offers more support in certain areas and less support in other areas, with an overall flexibility that is more comfortable than the shriveled, tightly knit “high-compression” tubes that characterize shapewear. Yang plans to sell the line under the name Fashion Slimmers.
“I think there is a fine line between shapewear and comfort. I think shapewear is more compression-driven than fashion-driven,” Yang said. Underpinnings evolution
Kathy Rodarte, the buyer for Lulu’s in Manhattan Beach, Calif., is already successful with brands that offer lightweight tanks and camisoles that do double duty as underpinnings and tops. Although these brands may not have been intended as shapewear to the same technical degree as a line such as Spanx, the retailer elaborated that Wendy Glez’s basic stretchy Modal tanks, Only Hearts’ “Second Skin” line and Cosabella’s “Talco” camisoles are her answer to smoothing underpinnings with a fashion edge.
“What’s nice about these pieces is they don’t add any extra to what you already have. It’s real smooth; it’s not bulky. It just layers nicely. The layering is really important,” Rodarte said.
“I think more and more, the designers are thinking along the lines of, ’It would be great if they could design something that they can also wear on its own and still have a great fashion sense to it.’ But I will say Wendy Glez has already done that; Cosabella’s already done that; Only Hearts has done that.”
Cosabella thinks it can do better. Capitalizing on its reputation for fashionable underpinnings, Cosabella will launch Cosabella Smoothy with a technical shapewear component for Fall ’09.
Guido Campello, vice president of branding and innovation for Cosabella, said retailers have repeatedly asked for “some pretty shapewear, please.”
Cosabella Smoothy transitions the gap between Cosabella’s “Bella” collection of restricting “technical” shapewear, which is designed to be worn under dresses for special occasions, and the Cosabella fashion lingerie line. Campello describes the Smoothy collection as designed for “comfort and for everyday use” while targeting the waistline. In bamboo/polyamide/elastane fabrications, the camisoles, high-waist thongs, bikini panties and shorts are lighter and more breathable than most nylon/spandex shapewear on the market.
“I think shapewear has gotten mainstream enough now to command some real estate in the stores for some fashion pieces and to be something that this next generation can use much more frequently,” Campello said. “I really think if you put an apparel hand to shapewear, it can become more significant of a category. We want to target it as an apparel accessory.”
Retail price points range from the high $30s for panties up to $73 for an underwire cami. The company will launch the line with standard nude, black and white and a handful of fashion colors.
For Houston, Texas–based MMK Brands, which also produces the Passport Panties line, Mary Kay Bowden listed fashion as the first problem that she and co-founders Morgan Harbin and Kim Willson wanted to fix with their shapewear line.
“People have seen the movie ’Bridget Jones’ Diary,’ when she’s embarrassed and caught in her big granny panties,” Bowden said. “I think that’s true for a lot of women. Shapewear is just typically not attractive. We wanted to make them pretty.”
MMK Brands uses Bonded For Life sew-free technology and laser-cut edges to achieve a smooth, seamless look on its poly/elastane camis, panties and slips. To combat the problem of fabric rolling or digging into the skin, a common problem in tightly knit shapewear, MMK Brands uses bonded seamless technology because the poly/elastane fabric lays flat against the body. The “Best Supporting Collection” of bras, camis, thongs and panties and “Double Feature Collection” of reversible camis and slips are offered in basic nude and black, as well as fashion colors such as pink, red and a purple gray. Retail prices range from $46 for a panty to $162 for a reversible slip.
While some companies add an aesthetic fashion twist to shapewear, others are adding a shapewear feature into ready-to-wear clothing.
Los Angeles–based Bordeaux is known for its seamless nylon/spandex tanks offered in an array of seasonal colors that can be used as basic layering pieces and its technical shapewear line, Skinny’z by Bordeaux. Last year, Bordeaux launched the “Flirt” lining, which offers a smoothing and supportive technology under its ready-to-wear dresses, tops and skirts. Tricky silhouettes to fit over bras, such as halter tops and strapless dresses, have built-in shelf bra support.
When a buyer is on the fence, choosing between two or three resources in the market, the supportive lining is a “very large selling point,” said sales rep Sylvana Kessell. The lining “sets the brand apart from all the other knits on the market,” she said.
