National Post (National Edition)
The Underneath
Before Spanx and their ilk took over the lingerie department, there were slips. Thankfully, three Canadian firms haven’t forgotten this wardrobe staple
In the days before Spanx, women wore slinky, clinky — but not gut-sucking — slips for the prevention of static, for opacity and for a dress to fall more smoothly. Today, such artefacts seem a throwback to earthy ’ 50s bombshells like Ava Gardner and Elizabeth Taylor, who famously wore a slip in her Academy Awardwinning role as a call girl in
Butterfield 8. More recently, Scarlett Johannson had a Broadway turn in another role that Taylor made indelible while wearing a slip — Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
While Spanx giveth, they also taketh away. And as any woman who has tried to buy a traditional half-slip or dress slip lately will have realized, they are an endangered species. The department store lingerie department should now more aptly be called the “shapewear” department: I tried to buy one a few months ago and all I found was an array of stretchy nude hosiery tubes hanging limply as far as the eye could see. The stalwart department clerk commiserated with me as I left empty-handed, resolved to find a source for this archaic underpinning.
Eventually, I found three, all made in Canada. As a basic underpinning to be worn under their sheer dresses and jersey collections (or just, you know, around the house for a glamorous take on housekeeping), Comrags makes a full slip with bust seams and a deep vneck in stretchy black microfibre, and it is pitch-perfect ($95, comrags.com). For her label Dahlia Drive, Vancouver artist Wendy Van Riesen upcycles vintage nylon and polyester slips while adding modern verve with screen-printed graphics, dip-dyed tints and even hand-painting — the results of her latest inspiration, from Chagall’s Jerusalem windows, are just as lovely worn on their own as under a dress (from $150 at Starfire Gallery, Urbanity, Planet Claire and Tutta Mia in Vancouver, dahliadrive.com).
And for a real honey of a vavoom honeymoon, Toronto’s lingerie brand Fortnight has revived the look in all its glory with its lace-paneled Mira slip ($165, in red, ivory or black at Gravity Pope in Edmonton, Gravity Pope & LynnSteven in Vancouver, Simons in Laval, Quebec, St-Bruno and Montreal, L’Infinity in Nelson, Linea Intima, Secrets From Your Sister in Toronto and other boutiques, fort nightlingerie.com).