Men’s Idea Of The Perfect Lingerie Is Totally Predictable

Just like men and women have very different ideas about the ideal standards of beauty, they also have pretty different opinions when it comes to finding the perfect lingerie for women.

U.K.-based lingerie company Bluebella (who’s also responsible for the Perfect Female Body poll) conducted a survey that asked both sexes what they look for in lingerie styles.

Unsurprisingly, the male vision is full of flesh, lace, bows, suspenders, and stockings in bright colours. (Perhaps a result of our society’s over-the-top “sex sells” mentality?) The results showed that 54 per cent of men chose a revealing bra and 37 per cent chose the skimpiest underwear as their favourites.

Women, on the other hand, tend to prefer more subtle, understated tones and styles with a little more coverage. According to the survey, 62 per cent of ladies prefer their bums to be covered by their underwear, and 64 per cent said that when choosing a bra, comfort was the most important — a full cup was the most popular choice.

The Daily Mail notes that the average British woman buys five lingerie sets a year and 67 per cent of them don’t think twice about what their partner’s preferences might be when they make their purchase. Instead, they’re just focused on what they want and need to accentuate their best assets, which is exactly how it should be.

While we’re firm believers that you don’t need anyone telling you what type of underwear you should be wearing, we also don’t see anything wrong with buying a sexy lingerie set to please both yourself and your partner.

In fact, results from the survey also revealed that 84 per cent of women do keep special lingerie on hand for special occasions, and 89 per cent said they felt more sexually confident when wearing it.

Whatever your lingerie preference, you just keep doing you!

Which lingerie styles do you prefer? Let us know in the comments below, and click through the gallery above for all the lessons we’ve learned from celebrities in lingerie.

How To Find The Right Bra In 6 Steps

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Sourcing Knits in Peru

From high street brands like Super Dry to luxury labels like Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren and sustainable labels have chosen to source in Peru.

Often leading the way in fashion in terms if production models as well as style Danish and Swedish brands are choosing Peru for knitting placing a value on quality and sourcing sustainably with natural materials.

As a producer of high quality cotton and other fibres with deep experience in circular, flat and fully fashioned garment knitting with unique fibre options such as organic cottons, alpaca and vicuña it’s worth investigating.

Peru is following Brazil and Chile with a rapidly developing economy and a stable government, Perumoda their annual fashion week and sourcing fair has matured into a highly professional and coherent showcase with even the larger companies within the industry choosing to have stands at the show.

The new layout makes sourcing much easier for visitors. Promperu the show organiser which is also the promotional wing for exports reported that of 400 of the buyers came from their direct invitation, 55% were first time visitors and included visitors from Russia, Poland, Taiwan and interestingly China.

So why fly for over 12 hours to source in Peru?

Jessica Rodriguez of successful knitting company remarks that “Peru cannot compete on price, so it competes in other areas:

1. Quality
2. Natural fibres
3. Service- clients receive a very professional service, good rapport and good quality for price
4. Ethical: due to the government regulations workers rights and pay is secure. Workers are well treated throughout the value chain.

Cotton

Peru’s greatest asset is the purity and standard of its cottons including the long staple Pima and Tanguis. The major advantage of Peruvian Pima is that it is still hand picked which means that they are able to guarantee a near 100% level of purity which mechanised harvesting cannot.

The majority of the Pima is processed by Textil Piura who just process and spin and Creditex which is one of the textile heavy-weights.

Built from the acquisition of a number of smaller companies, Creditex covers the complete vertical from raw fibre through circular and flat knitting to fully finished garments.

Organic Cotton

Peru also has been rapidly increasing it’s capacity for Organic Cotton with more companies acquiring GOTS certification and other accreditations and licenses for both environmental standards and Fair Trade.

Organic Cotton company Bergman Rivera, not only supply organic Pima and Tanguis but also have invested in communities to cultivate coloured cotton.

These are a limited palette of cultivars of wild or jungle cotton, which comes in cream, beige, red cotton is a rust/cinnamon brown, also green and a blue cotton. This is particularly popular in baby wear.

Circular and flat knitted cotton

The majority of this sector if the industry is based in the capital Lima. Companies such as Topy Top, Creditex, Algotex Peru,Pacific Trading Group S.A.C to name but four have extensive experience in knitting high quality t-shirts, sweatshirts, sportswear, you will also find a a number of specialists in lingerie and nightwear.

This manufacturers have deep experience in working for the mid-market and luxury brands. Topy Top supplies SuperDry with T-shirts as they knit the fabric and produce right through to the demanding finishing stages that SuperDry demand which includes special surface finishing, textures as well as embellishments and embroidery.

Brands like Polo Ralph Lauren, Lacoste and Hilfiger choose Peru over China for their T-shirts due to the high quality of cotton, make and finishing.

Cotton knitted garments

With cotton and an increasing amount of organic cotton and blends available, this is becoming an ever more popular yarn for knitted garments such as jumpers, cardigans but also for home wear such as dressing gowns.

Art Atlas are a specialist in organic cotton knit wear, supplying to high end brands, this is a growing area of production.

Alpaca Fibre and Yarns

Alpaca is having a fashion moment attracting knitwear designers from all over Europe, Japan, US, Canada and Central and Latin America as well as home grown Peruvian brands. This formerly misunderstood fibre is now gaining popularity as it has many advantages over cashmere. For this reason the average cost per kilo has risen to $38 due to the increased demand. This now puts alpaca fairly and squarely in the luxury fibre category.

Alpaca fibre yarn Facts:

• A member of the camelid family, a natural noble 
• A hollow fibre, having dynamic thermal properties keeping you warm when it is cold and keeping heat off you in warmer weather
• Absorbs humidity and is breathable
• Strong and very elastic ideal for knitting
• The top three grades offer different texture options.
• Two main breeds of Alpaca: Huacaya, the more wooly looking animal and the Suri whose coat is thinner, appears crimped has a longer staple.
• Alpaca is a good choice for kids clothes as it is very soft and supposed to be hypoallergenic. Alpaca are environmental low impact
• Alpaca blends very well with wool, silk and cotton and LUREX extending the seasons for knitted products
• Alpaca readily takes up dye including vegetable dye. In Arequipa there is a natural dye works creating hand painted yarns called Calicampo. 
• 26 natural colours varying from white to grey, beige/champagne and deep russet browns, chocolate and a natural black as well as white
• Alpaca also felts very well for more structured garments such as coats and skirts.

 

Alpaca Grades:

• Super Baby or Royal Baby starts at 20 microns or less but now can be as low as 15 microns but genetics programmes aim at further micron reduction.
• Baby alpaca 20 -22 microns the most popular grade, very soft springy fibre
• Superfine 22-26 microns which is excellent for highly textured knitting, and patterns such as deep ribbing, cables and 3D effects such as deep waffle patterns. It is machine washable and in fact becomes softer and better with each wash.
• Pilling is less than cashmere

Processing is mostly done in the beautiful white city of Arequipa in Southern Peru by two main companies: Incatops and Michel who offer a stock service in their Lima, Arequipa and Hong Kong shops.

Other Yarns

Michel are also working with their local highland wool in pure yarns and blends. Highland wool is similar to Shetland wool in terms of having a crisp handle but is much softer and has the volume of lambs wool.

Super Lux fibres and Yarns

Guanaco and vicuña are also Peruvian camelids. 70% of all vicuña lives in Peru. Vicuña is as expensive as gold ounce for ounce, vicuña sweaters are very popular in the US, Japan Chinese super lux markets.

Guanaco between vicuña and alpaca and is currently underused, but could be a good alternative to cashmere being low impact environmentally.

Yarn innovation

Large companies such as Michel are constantly innovating with fancy yarns, dying and spinning innovations bit smaller companies like Alpacolca have been experimenting with ombré dying effects and boucle yarns to create yarns and knitwear that are like storm clouds, very light, soft and warm.

Alpaca Knitting

Sweden and this year Denmark have shown collections Perumoda. The combination of Scandinavian design, demands for quality and Peruvian fibres, production design support and manufacturing capability seem to be going from strength to strength, Alpaca is a very popular fibre in Northern Europe where quality, ecological, ethical and design are valued.

Tradition and Innovation in yarns and knitting

Art Atlas owner Jessica Rodriquez notes that the reason buyers should look to Peru not just for the fibre but because, “this comes from our ancestors, from the Incas,” Peru has an unusually rich textile tradition. There are techniques and stitches in Peru you will not find anywhere else including Frivolite which looks like Spanish lace.

To be competitive as well as quality and service Peru has to work hard at innovation and offering styles and techniques not available in knitting competitor counties such as Turkey and China MFH knits, part of the Michel group showed some truly innovative types of knits and dyes, notably denim style indigo dyed knits that had both texture but also a washed denim and multi colour layers.

This could be a very interesting option as denim is making a major come back in fashion.

Knitting production:

• Knitting companies are mainly sited in Lima, Arequipa Huancayo.
• Capacity is flexible with most knitting companies, but there is a wide range if companies to suit different types of orders.
• Knitting capacities: Larger companies such as Corceli, which have capacities of up to 15,000 pieces per month and re-order times of 45 – 60 days to much smaller enterprises which work with boutique brands.

Flexibility on small orders

The variety of companies in Peru means that you can shop around for small orders which given the changing landscape of fashion will be very useful for young brands and companies who have smaller premium and luxury lines or ecol-lines. Many knitting companies have their own boutique brand lines so they understand the problems of getting the production right and getting a design from drawing to final production.

Danish buyer said that they sourced from Arequipa based Alpacolca because they could work directly with a manufacturer who was also a designer, it was the fact that they could meet at Perumoda and go to Arequipa to work directly. Small order quantities, their personal service were also key. The detractors were the time difference and the language.  However,  you will   Usually find at least person in a company will be an English speaker.

Quality suppliers

In the middle of the market are companies like Art Atlas in Arequipa and Sumy Kujon in Lima, both work mainly in alpaca, Art Atlas has expertise in organic cotton and blends. Art Atlas has been supplying to Eileen Fisher in the US and also Prada. Incalpaca as a weaver and knitter supply to Hermes and Saks. Sumy Kujon supplies throughout Latin America including Mexico and Brazil, into Europe and also Japan.

Knitting companies range of gauges vary from 3 to 12 guage. 

Smaller companies can take on small orders of as little as 80 pieces at Sumy Kujon and 150 at Art Atlas. With hand looming the orders can be significantly lower in volume and hand knitting down to 12 pieces minimum. They often work with remote workers on hand looms giving additional flexibility but for Art Atlas this is part of their policy of wealth creation for ritual communities.

Hand knitting

Hand knitting is a traditional indigenous craft. Communities are receiving more and more investment from NGOs to set up cooperatives such as Mujeres Ayamaras.

The women and often men of these communities are immensely skilled in a whole range of textile crafts and now are powered by mobile technology, solar electricity and are more inclined to visit Lima themselves and travel than in the past so there is greater potential to work with overseas customers directly in a professional way.

The other major centre of knitting is the city of huancayo in Central Peru. This city has a long heritage of knitting and is a strongly industrialised town. 

Sportswear and swim wear

Sportswear is a huge sector of the manufacture industry in Peru, mostly based in Lima.

Swimwear is relatively small but Peru is home to luxury swimwear brand Applauzi which has very high level design, fit and quality. and producers the Pacific Trading Group,

Children’s wear

Peru has a huge children’s wear capacity as this is linked to the he cotton industry. The show regular attracts specialist journalists in children’s wear.

The natural yarns and expertise make Peru and excellent sourcing destination for quality kids and baby wear. The natural cottons and organic cotton are further attractions.

Elastic Knitting and notions

This sector of the market is dominated by Rey, who after YKK make the best zips. They are thoroughly tested both in the lab and due to South America’s love affair with denim. Above this they are also suppliers of embroidery for embellishments, labels and knitted accessories most notably the elastic waistbands for Calvin Klein men’s briefs.

A list of companies can be obtained by contacting PromPeru

Monica Chavez

mchavez@promperu.gob.pe

PeruModa and The Peru Gift Show is held every April in Lima, Peru.

www.perumoda.com

Author: Billy Hunter

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