I note with great relish that British women have overtaken the French as the biggest spenders on lingerie in Europe. We now fling an average of £71 a year at our underpinnings, beating the French by a whole pound (or 1.45 Euros, if you’re feeling Continental). ‘Bout time too, I say. 

I have long been mortified by this nation’s stereotyped ineptitude in the underwear department. Other countries always appeared to do it with so much more aplomb. In my mind’s eye, the French, dishabille, come across as coquettish and enrobed in silk, in the same way as rum truffles might be enrobed in chocolate. The Italians in their undies would be all glistening, tawny skin and va-va-voom, with lots of black lacing and panels of sheer gauze, like escapees from a Dolce and Gabbana perfume advert. We, meanwhile, seem to have lumbered about for decades in roomy drawers, those limp, multi-washed, multi-worn garments which barely deserve the whisper-word “lingerie”. 

Things were worse, of course, in our grandmothers’ day. If I force myself, I can just about remember my gran’s underwear collection, and Lord knows it wasn’t a pretty sight. To my child eye, everything looked vastly complicated, like the rigging for a Spanish galleon. And it was all in plaster-pink, the kind of colour that can suck all the joy out of a room. A little later came the panty-girdles and industrial bras, which would hoist a bosom northwards with the power of Godzilla arising from the Deep. At least things eased up a bit with the advent of Lycra, though for my money there was nothing especially sensual about wearing a “body”, with the poppered gusset heading ever northwards as if on a mission to get to the Pole before bed-time.

But in the last five years or so, we have gone all silly about frillies. I put it down to the Agent Provocateur effect – a shop with more sauce than HP which has managed, somehow, to tattoo itself on the national psyche. It wasn’t so long ago that the glorious tartiness of Ag-Prov would have shocked the pants off the British knicker-buying public. Now, we’re all dolled up like high-class hookers beneath our work-suits and track-pants and jeans. We’re queuing up for billowing ribbons, itsy-bitsy bows and scarlet satin at M&S, and we are finally beating the French at their own game.

As Mary Flack at Fenwick’s department store puts it, “Women will often spend more on underwear than the rest of their clothes because it makes them feel good.” Kate Winslet, for one, finds it impossible to get into character without the right bra. "I start with the bra. If the bra's right, everything else falls into place," she says. Absolutely. Just a thought, though. On average, European men spend a lousy £13 a year on their own chuddies. Hello, Boys – get with the programme, won’t you? Something dashing from Dolce would, in my humble opinion, be just the thing.

Published You Magazine, April 10 2005