If Serena Rees and Joseph Corre have their way, the Manhattan black-tie party circuit will be changed forever.
"You know when women go to black-tie parties, they carry those little purses?" Rees, a founder, with Corre, of the English lingerie line Agent Provocateur, asked the other day over coffee and cigarettes at the SoHo Grand Hotel.
"Well, why not carry a riding crop?" she said.
If the image of, say, a Nan Kempner or a Pia Getty showing up at the next ballet gala armed with a riding crop sends you running for the shrink's couch, there's more. On Thursday, Corre and Rees will be the hosts of a preview party for Agent Provocateur SoHo, the New York outpost of their S&M-influenced lingerie and accessories.
The riding crop, studded with Swarovski crystals, sells for US$245.
"And we've got a full stock," Rees said, her voice squeaky with cheerleader enthusiasm.
The quarter-cup bras, rib-crushing corsets and zippered panties make the Victoria's Secret line look like the Carter's with the snapped-elastic waist that girls wore in fourth grade. Rose McGowan, Naomi Campbell and Sophie Dahl are big fans. When Christina Aguilera stopped into Henri Bendel and bought an orange Agent Provocateur bra, it made the tabloids. The merchandise is priced for celebrities, too: bras sell for up to US$230 and panties up to US$195. Access-ories, like the rhinestone-locking cuffs and collar chain, sell for up to US$700.
Buying, of course, is half the spectacle. Saleswomen in Agent Provocateur boutiques wear pink micromini dresses with decolletage, fishnet stockings and black patent leather pumps with four-inch heels and pink bows. Corsets are strongly encouraged. The look is one of hobbled femininity, a cross between the elaborate costume of a geisha and the vampishness of a streetwalker.
"Remember, a corset is a support garment," Corre said. "It's good for you."
Other consumer product sales may be sagging, but lingerie is booming. Victoria's Secret had US$3.3 billion in lingerie and cosmetics sales last year. Underpants -- conversations about them, showing them, watching them on television -- have become part of daily life, and Abercrombie & Fitch began marketing thong underwear to pre-teenage girls last year.
Corre and Rees, who are married and have a young daughter, founded the company in London in 1994 after meandering through jobs in fashion, music and advertising.
Corre, the offspring of a punk dynasty, is the son of Vivienne Westwood, the fashion designer, and Malcolm McLaren, the impresario behind the Sex Pistols. Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious camped out on his parents' floor when he was a child. Sid took him to the candy store.
"People ask me if I had a normal childhood," Corre said. "Well, I only had one childhood, so I don't have anything to compare it to."
Corre's lineage has provided amusing moments. When Rees was giving birth, she was close to blacking out from pain and turned to reach for the mask supplying a painkilling gas.
"I'm reaching for it, and I can't find it. ... I turn around, and there are Joe and Malcolm sucking away at it. You're having a baby, and there is Malcolm McLaren in the corner inhaling your gas," she said.
Corre's mother, whose designs have included a rubber nun's outfit (for men), taught him everything about clothing, he said.
"`Never do something unless there's a reason for it,'" Corre quoted.
He was smoking Silk Cuts and wearing Vivienne Westwood from head to toe, along with a sparkling skull and crossbones around his neck. ("Also my mum," he said.)
He met Rees at a London nightclub 10 years ago in a fable from the book of fashion fairy tales: She was the clipboard girl with the guest list.
"She was on the door, and she gave me a real hard time," he said.
Corre, who thought himself the coolest guy in London with the coolest pedigree, was intrigued. How could she not let him in?
"The party was full," she said.
"Then she invited herself round for dinner. ... Didn't you?" he said.
"I think we went to a party for John Galliano," she said.
They were working in fashion and decided at the same time that the key element missing was the sexy underwear to go with couture.
"In London eight years ago, you had department stores that sold black, white, ivory, nude, and maybe for holiday seasons or Valentine's Day, they would sell red things," Rees said.
"And then you'd have lingerie boutiques run by older ladies, who would try to get you into some great big strapping number. Or you could go to a sex shop, and it wouldn't be the nicest environment to shop in, and it would be cheaply made and not pleasurable to wear. I mean, you could wear it for two minutes, but that's about it," she said.
On a global quest, they went to St. Moritz, Paris and Rome and didn't find any good underwear anywhere.
"We went to Los Angeles. ... There was this fantasy of what you would expect to find there, you know, a kind of movie star glamour, Frederick's of Hollywood. But it was really disappointing," Corre said.
They found a company in northern England that still made corsets, and they sent the rest of their lingerie designs to be made in France. The first London store opened in 1994. There are now three. Their first foray into America was their Los Angeles boutique, which Corre calls "a kind of foreplay for New York."
Their literature and advertising is made up entirely of sexual images so frank they would make Helmut Newton blush. The catalog for the 2002 collection showed models in sportif poses -- legs splayed on the tennis court, legs splayed atop a bicycle, legs stretched out around a weight machine.
On the company's Web site a keyhole-shape screen shows women in lingerie and masks stripping off each other's clothing, and a model in a bra with strategically placed cutouts being spanked by her girlfriends, while phrases like "Nobody will recognize me in this disguise" and "I've tried to stop but I just can't help myself" alternate with the images.
One of Provocateur's early ads in England read, "More S&M, less M&S," alluding to the mass-market department store Marks & Spencer.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique