By Richard Vincente:

By the time you read this, most of the people working in the east coast’s lingerie industry will be back at their jobs following a week of anxiety, uncertainty and plenty of scrambling.

I’ve spoken to many lingerie professionals across the tri-state area hit by Hurricane Sandy in the past couple of days, and it’s safe to say that everyone was affected to some degree.

Stores left without power were forced to close, sewers couldn’t get to their factory jobs, and shipping ground to a halt because of suspended postal and parcel service, lost internet connections and downed phone lines.

It’s been a week of hell, and it’ll take some time for this industry and many others to get back to full steam. Luckily, for most people, a week’s worth of business was all they lost.

Still, for almost everyone in this business, the storm couldn’t have hit at a worse time.

Larger brands that have showrooms or offices in the garment district normally would have spent last week prepping for November market, the quarterly sales period when retail buyers come to town to place orders for next season’s collections. But the storm threw this market week into disarray as buyers cancelled hotel bookings and sales agents looked for ways to reschedule appointments.

And with ghoulish irony, Sandy pretty much killed Hallowe’en this year, thus depriving the area’s lingerie shops of a significant secondary revenue stream. Even Greenwich Village’s fabled annual Halloween parade was postponed because the NYPD was anxious about setting a massive crowd of costumed party-goers loose in the darkened village.

Other developments also impacted the flow of commerce across the region, like the cancellation of the New York Marathon, which typically brings hundreds of thousands of runners – and shoppers – into the city for the weekend.

Such disruptions could have a catastrophic impact on any company’s bottom line, especially for the many independent entrepreneurs who should have spent the past week gearing up for Black Friday sales and the Christmas holiday shopping season instead of bailing out their basements. But no one’s really complaining too much; they’re too busy cleaning up.

“It’ll take a lot more than a pesky hurricane to put us out of business,” Lida Orzeck, co-owner of Hanky Panky, told me. The venerable made-in-New-York brand got hit from both sides last week – power went out in its Manhattan offices and at its warehouse operations in Queens, effectively closing the business for most of the week.

“We’re feverishly trying to make up for lost time,” Lida said, noting that the e-commerce backlog is now up to date and the team is catching up on wholesale orders. Their market week appointments were pushed back a week, which means the Hanky Panky crew will have to deal with incoming retail buyers next week at the same time as they are holding a previously announced sample sale.

Despite all the stress, Lida had nothing but praise for her workforce, many of whom have been with the company for much of its 35 years in business. “The staff have been incredible,” she said. “They’re itching to get back to work. They know the company’s health is their health.”

Across the tri-state area, the storm also revealed the human element in shop owners who, let’s face it, have plenty to worry about right now.

In Red Bank, N.J., the Sweetest Sin boutique reopened on Thursday and began collecting donated bras for friends and neighbors who lost everything to Sandy. In Montclair, Johari Lingerie invited townsfolk to visit the shop to stay warm or use its power to charge their electronic devices – and gave shoppers an extra 20% off everything to boot. And in the coastal town of Stone Harbor, Lace Silhouettes – which set up a relief program providing underwear to disaster victims after Hurricane Katrina – offered its space as shelter for local residents displaced by the storm.

Over in Brooklyn, the online hosiery boutique Peek Brooklyn found itself in a bit of a pickle when flooding shut down the Red Hook postal station (photo above) they use for much of their shipping. Peek kept operating, though, and is donating 10% of all sales to support recovery efforts in Red Hook.

Sandy also brought out the creative side in some lingerie entrepreneurs. The e-commerce giant Bare Necessities, for example, was hobbled when its phone lines went down (though online operations were unaffected) in the power outage. Its solution? Reminding its Twitter and Facebook followers that they could still book orders (and fill all that post-Sandy free time) by shopping with their smartphones. They also invited fans to send in ideas for good board games to help them kill time

New Yorkers don’t have to worry about the sexiness shortage lasting much longer, though. Most businesses will be back by this week and Wednesday will bring a surfeit of sexy razzle-dazzle when the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is taped at the Lexington Armory for its Dec. 4 TV broadcast.

And there even might be a silver lining in Sandy for the intimates industry. After people across the east coast huddled together in darkness for much of the week, experts are now predicting a huge spike in the local birth rate come next July.

So, a tip to all you lingerie brands and stores out there – this might be a good time to think about expanding your maternity lines.

Richard Vincente is the editor of LingerieTalk.com. Last week, Lingerie Talk published a gallery of images of New York lingerie brands who were affected by Hurricane Sandy. You can see it here.

By Richard Vincente

What’s the point of the Victoria’s Secret Fantasy Bra?

Journalists look forward to covering the annual Victoria’s Secret diamond fantasy bra about as much as Groundhog Day or the Santa Claus Parade, and for the same reasons.

The story never changes from year to year and, whatever your professional ethics, you’re required to play along and spread the malarkey rather than spoil the fun for the folks at home. Anyone who blows the whistle is a Grinch.

So it was the other day when Victoria’s Secret unveiled this year’s blinged-out bra, and fashion writers across the country got in line to regurgitate the facts spoon-fed to them from the company’s press release:

The 2012 Floral Fantasy Bra (FFB) and matching belly chain are worth $2.5-million (though no one ever questions the valuation) and is comprised of 5,200 precious and semi-precious stones (though no one can get close enough to count).

There’s a matching bottle containing the company’s Bombshell fragrance and tarted up with $500,000 worth of matching stones, presumably so you’ll have something to hold when you’re walking around in your FFB.

The whole package will be modeled during the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show on Dec. 4 by Brazilian beauty Alessandra Ambrosio, who gushed dutifully about the incomparable “honor” of wearing it, as if she’d just been named grand marshal of the Rose Bowl parade or picked to sing at the Super Bowl.

Admittedly, this year’s fantasy bra is very pretty (it almost always is) and it makes for an eye-popping news story (ditto). Unfortunately, it’s a work of fiction, not fashion. It could be made of Silly Putty and you wouldn’t be any the wiser.

Victoria’s Secret tries to pretend this is NOT just an expensive PR stunt by including the Floral Fantasy ensemble in their annual Christmas catalogue and listing it as a “gift set”. But go ahead and try to buy it, and let me know how that works out for you. The truth is, no one ever has bought one of the company’s fantasy/miracle/diamond bras since they were introduced in 1996, and a VS spokesperson admitted in 2010 that all of the diamond bras were dismantled after their runway appearance.

In fact, very few people will actually see the FFB in person since the company hand-picks the small audience of fashion insiders, celebrities and bond traders who attend the fashion show tapings in New York.

Let’s be honest: the Victoria’s Secret diamond bra is as ridiculous as it is beautiful, an unwearable, over-the-top luxury item used to promote a fast-fashion retail chain. If anyone really wanted underwear with that kind of price tag, and could afford it, they’d shop at La Perla.

On the surface, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with staging a PR spectacle like this. It generates countless free media mentions and diverts the public’s attention away from football and politics and back to shopping, where people should be focused at this time of year.

And as a media juggernaut, it probably gets more coverage (and spawns more shallow conversation) than anything except the annual release of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, which somehow manages to command the undivided attention of the entire planet for a few brief hours each winter (alien invaders take note!).

A year ago, I wrote an article for Lingerie Talk that called upon Victoria’s Secret to retire the diamond bra and drop the heavily stage-managed press rollout that introduces it each year.

The gratuitous display of aspirational excess seemed horribly out of step with the times, and a thoughtless slap in the face to millions of consumers struggling to pay their debts and for whom a $20 three-pack of Victoria’s Secret panties is enough of a splurge. The diamond bra was, I said at the time, the kind of thing Marie Antoinette would wear to her beheading.

Not much has changed since then, except that the national discourse about America’s crumbling middle class and the widening income gap between rich and poor has become a central part of the presidential election campaign. The country’s elite class is now under fire, oddly, not just for its accumulated wealth but also for its oblivious disregard for the changing fortunes of the other 95%. You don’t have to think very hard to see what side of that debate is symbolized by a $2.5 million bra.

Alas, it’s hard to imagine Victoria’s Secret will ever dump the annual ritual, even though I can’t really believe it provides much added value to their bottom line. Do more people tune in to the VS Fashion Show just to see it? I doubt it. Do sales go up for the Christmas catalogue when you dangle an impossibly unattainable bauble in front of shoppers? Again, I doubt it.

Victoria’s Secret’s marketing campaigns are so relentless and pervasive during holiday season that the fantasy bra seems flagrantly unnecessary. It doesn’t make the Angels any more attractive, or the fashion show any glitzier, and it won’t embed the Victoria’s Secret brand any deeper into your consciousness.

So what’s the point of it all? I suspect the continued existence of the VS diamond bra has more to do with the company’s own corporate aspirations than anything else. For one day a year, Victoria’s Secret becomes the purveyor of world-class luxury, not just a chain of mall stores with shiny pink bags and a free $10 coupon for all customers. Its models tingle at the prospect of “earning” the right to hoist the hardware and, for a few days, the world falls at their feet. They are, in those precious moments, the Neiman Marcus of underwear.

Everyone, it seems, loves a fantasy no matter how far out of reach it really is.

Richard Vincente covers lingerie news for LingerieTalk.com.

By Richard Vincente

Watching the U.S. presidential debate the other night, I was (like so many others) horrified by the steady stream of half-truths, exaggerations, misquoted promises, outdated arguments and other hyperbolic rhetorical devices used by both candidates to slyly smear each other.

I’m Canadian, and while we have our own brand of political gamesmanship up here, the utter mendaciousness of the U.S. campaign is both foreign and reprehensible to us Canucks.

And I’m familiar enough with the American political scene to know that much of what’s coming out of both the Democratic and GOP campaigns this year has been twisted, distorted, whitewashed and manufactured to disparage one’s opponent and make your candidate appear more attractive by comparison. As a result, it’s increasingly difficult for … Read more

By Richard Vincente

Kristen Stewart was just down the road from me in Toronto last Thursday night, walking the red carpet at the film festival and basking in some sisterly love from a throng of sympathetic fans. Being polite Canadians, no one – not even the press – asked her about the affair.

Kristen had been photographed the night before wearing one of ex-beau Robert Pattinson‘s T-shirts as she zipped through Toronto’s airport with her head down – an image that caused hearts to heave across the land.

It was her first public appearance since word leaked in July of her fling with film director Rupert Sanders, scuttling her fairytale romance with Twilight co-star. The girl was clearly still in mourning and … Read more

By Richard Vincente

Victoria’s Secret Faces An Uphill Battle In The UK Lingerie Market

The queue should start forming any day now. Clusters of excited teens and twenty-somethings, all girls, will line up along New Bond Street and around the corner onto Brook. Police will be called in to direct traffic and private security crews will manage the crowds trying to get inside. Reporters and bloggers and TV cameras will be everywhere.

Say what you want about Victoria’s Secret, they sure know how to turn underwear shopping into an event.

Anticipation over the opening of the American chain’s London flagship store — its first full-product store outside of North America* — has been building for months, only to be deflated in July when … Read more

The post-baby body has become the ultimate celebrity status symbol

It’s hard not to feel sympathy for poor Jessica Simpson. The singer/fashion brand/reality TV star is accustomed to being picked on by the tabloid press, but these days she is getting the kind of attention that should make women around the world shudder.

Jessica’s offense? Emerging from her first pregnancy with something other than the kind of sleek, toned, ripple-free physique that we’ve come to expect from celebrity new moms.

Weight control issues have plagued Jessica for years, but never more so than in the weeks before and after the May delivery of her daughter Maxwell. Jessica embraced her pregnancy gleefully, posing for magazine shoots and keeping up promotional appearances well into her final month … Read more

by Richard Vincente

I attended my first LPGA tournament in Canada last week and, although I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, it reminded me of a sadly enduring truth: people can be pigs.

I presumed the fairways would be lined with serious golf fans, but it seemed like many people thought they were really attending a fashion show or a bachelor party. I spent much of the day eavesdropping on whispered crowd chatter. And much of what I overheard was shockingly, regressively sexist.

Many men in the crowd were less interested in a golfer’s skills (which were seriously impressive) than in her legs, boobs, butt, hair and overall do-ability. I lost track of how many times I heard someone mutter a predictable pun about scoring or … Read more