Meet some of the styles we produce almost every month:
Most months, we make Van Doren 6 strap, 8 straps, and boned suspender belts, plus the Vargas longline girdle, roll on girdle and panty girdles, all in black. Often we also make the Van Doren Bralet, seamed shortie knicker, pin up knickers, again all in black, and then the longline, boned belt and roll on girdle in ivory.
We launched these about two years ago now, and it’s been a bit of an organic collection that covers your basics for a retro stockings wearer; its hugely affected by the availability of fabrics. For example, we can’t do the Van Doren pieces in ivory because we can’t get the fabric – the minimum to order it in would mean we wouldn’t get through it for about 2 years, and we can’t afford to have money tied up in fabric that long!
All of them are made in Nottingham (UK) by a small family owned manufacturer, and we used to make them in small amounts using upcycled fabrics – ends of line, clearance, that sort of thing, that bigger companies get rid of but that can make a small company like us quite a few pieces. We switched to a consistent supplier for the swim/dancewear fabric we use for the Van Doren pieces a while back, and now we’re at the point where we’re making enough that we need to switch to someone consistent for the powernet we use too.
On the upside, it should improve the consistency of the garments and also mean we can get fabrics when we need them and not have to wait to make things till we can find some! On the downside, between that and increasing costs in general, we’re looking at a price rise . So from the end of October you’ll notice a small rise (about 5%) in the retail price of these styles.
During January I want to relaunch the range with a few changes:
New pictures. When we did them originally we used bras and knickers that we and Playful Promises had at the time; those have since sold out, and we’d rather show you things you can get!
We’re refitting and redeveloping the bralet to improve it (the ones we’ve done are great, very comfy and versatile, but not as good as the original sample so we want to sort that out), and we should be doing an ivory lace version to go with the ivory styles – and an ivory lace knicker.
Add detachable suspenders to the Vargas pantygirdle – it works so well on the DeVille version we thought you’d appreciate it.
Change the shape of the centre panel on the Van Doren 6 and 8 strap suspender belts. We got counterfeited on these this year! I can’t say much about that as its now with Trading Standards and my solicitor keeps editing anything funny I write about it, but we’d like to make sure that we do all we can to stop it happening again, and in any event, there’s a more flattering shape we could do. It does mean we’ve made a few white ones again though, since that was how we got tipped off to the fakes. Dear fakers, don’t try selling something we don’t make anymore, it makes it obvious.
We’re also looking at the Amy cincher and the pull on belt and wondering about adding them to the range permanently – in black, obviously! But, we already have problems keeping up with demand on these product lines – our factory is now used by a few brands and is so busy they’ve given in and taken on 3 apprentices. So we may have to stick at merely adding the ivory pieces. I should probably mention that quite often these styles come in and go straight out to stockists again rather than being sold through us, so its generally worth checking Lovehoney (huge adult site) , Joanna’s Wardrobe (UK retro lingerie specialist), and Legstore (Germany).
We do try our best to keep one of each size in each style in the shop in Marylebone, though I’ve removed the ivory styles over winter to make space for Elle robes and Sirena bras and whatnot!
