My forays into writing about lingerie have been few and far between. I've written about fetish wear, latex garments, harneses, elastic corsets and all of that kind of ilk but poor old lingerie has to suffer and languish in the corner. Clearly I'm a consenting adult who's a quarter of a century old and is in a relationship so yes, *shock shock horror horror* I do actually like to look sexy behind closed doors (looking sexy in the outside world is another matter altogether...). You mean...Susie isn't an asexual being? What...
I bring up the sex factor because my general approach to lingerie is that I can't really afford to splurge on it just to empower my own meek self but yes, in a depressingly misogynist conforming stereotype, lingerie consumption does for me lean towards impressing the opposite sex. Hey for all GoFemme GoGo Girls out there, if it's any consolation, it is literally a cash thing rather than an actual act of female submission.
In addition, I'm also ridiculously picky towards lingerie, in a way that I'm NOT towards clothes and shoes. Hence why it is hard for lingerie to get a look in. In the case of Dietrich though, I'm making an exception both in terms of posting and purchasing. Frederika Cook set up Dietrich in 2008 with the philosophy that she would create a niche in lingerie drawing inspiration from haute couture and old Hollywood glamour. She sets out to create lingerie as a parfumeur would craft a fragrance, taking a base note as structure, middle note as fabrics and the top note as the finishing touches (trims, skins, leathers....) all made in England or France.
The concept of old Hollywood glamour really shouldn't be resonating with me, with my very non-hourglass bod and a distaste for things that veer too much towards a retro cliche. However both Dietrich A/W 09-10 and S/S 10 collections seem to embody a spirit of the old but not be overtaken by it. The incorporation of leather and sting ray for example add something more robust and modern to the pieces. Traditional corsets are inverted by being constructed with exoskeletal boning. There's something there that balances between sickeningly girly and vampishly sexy that strikes a chord with me.
I feel like a visit to Cook needs to be undertaken to really grasp the full details of what Dietrich is all about and also to try the stuff on... I suppose I should be quite scared that lingerie features in outerwear always seem to rock my boat because clearly I would need to stop myself from wearing Dietrich on the outside and keep it firmly behind closed doors.
