Fancy underneath

It’s not that I ordinarily wear tatty undergarments. (I am, after all, the daughter of a (wonderful) woman who made sure to instil early in my developing brain that it would be an unpardonable shame to be caught wearing unbecoming underwear in a hospital after an accident.) It’s just that I have stacks and stacks (okay, perhaps just stacks, pur et simple) of fancy underwear in my drawers, and it pains me to catch glimpses of the vanilla lace and black ribbons and shiny pink bows as I reach for the clean white comfort of cotton every morning. Where is my inner kinky? Why is a Mona Lisa smile not suspended on my lips while I keep Victoria’s Secret snugly pressed around my curves?  So I decided to put wearing fancy underwear on no special occasion on my new things and old things to do list, and executed the deed on a most ordinary workday a couple of days back.

And that’s pretty much it. I hope you’re not sitting on the edge of your chair waiting for me to tell you something revelatory and awesome, because I’m not. As disappointing as it sounds, wearing fancy underwear doesn’t make you feel in any way exceptional. (Otherwise, I must be missing something.) (Mind you, this is perhaps because I generally wear nice underwear. Garfield or Snoopy don’t inhabit my underwear drawers.) (I can’t understand how women in their thirties can shop for underwear at H&M, can you?) What my quest made me realise is that fancy underwear is really meant to be shown around: unless you can let the exquisite hem of your silk camisole peek from under a V-necked sweater, there’s no point in wearing it in the place of a plain white cotton vest top. Wearing fancy underwear under my ordinary clothes didn’t make me feel rebellious or debonair – in fact, I felt much more alive when I wore a herd of deer brooches (okay, two) on my sweater a few days previously.

The verdict? Don’t just wear your fancy underwear for the sake of wearing it. If you’re going to be fancy, show it off (and that applies to all areas of life).