Experts: Celebrities boost shapewear sales
Thanks to such celebrities as Rihanna, Lady GaGa, Beyonce and some others, shapewear is gloriously back on store racks.
According to WWD.com, annual retail sales of shapewear grew 10.6 percent to $848.3 million from March 2009 to February 2010, and unit sales increased 3.8 percent during that period, The NPD Group research consultancy has revealed.
Furthermore, sales of shapewear undergarments of plus sizes XL to XXXL or larger gained 14.8 percent last year.
Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Beyonce are huge in this [lingerie-shapewear] equation,” Robert Thompson, professor of television and pop culture at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, said. “There has to be something of a fashion authority, something that shows people looking good in what they’re wearing, whether it’s prime time TV, a fashion show in Paris or an ad in Vogue.
If it goes to the extreme item such as Lady Gaga or Rihanna wearing foundations, you will see a huge interest all of a sudden in something like a corset. That’s when it gets to be a smoking gun.…As brilliant as Mad Men is about Americans in the early Sixties — the show makes old Fifties girdles look so fabulous under clothing — it’s more brilliant as an ad for undergarments.”
