Lingerie the French Way
LAS VEGAS—As Parisian–based lingerie designer Fifi Chachnil holds up one of her sheer black corsets with an extra-pinched hourglass waist, she sums up the difference between the casual American way and high-fashion French way of lingerie dressing. “I like pieces that design the body, that help or support or really structure. I don’t like things loose or comfortable,” Chachnil said with a laugh at the recent CurveNV lingerie show in Las Vegas, where she showed her latest collection. “I prefer to make you suffer a little bit.”
A fantastical sense of costume is a requisite in Fifi Chachnil designs—from a short, subtly hugging red angora sweater to ruffled can-can petticoat skirts that fan out like a wedding cake. The designer’s next project—designing costumes for 10 scenes of the striptease cabaret show Crazy Horse in Paris—kicks up the showmanship quotient. The Crazy Horse cabaret show was created in the 1950s and in modern times features acts such as the porcelain-skinned Dita Von Teese.
Designer Fifi Chachnil
A corset designed by Fifi Chachnil
