Underwear as outerwear: Do you dare to flash your frillies?

From Céline to KLûK CGDT, fashion designers around the world are championing underwear as outerwear this season. As a forthcoming V&A museum exhibition charts the history of lingerie, Helen Jennings explores how modern women are owning their sensuality by putting their intimates elegantly on show

Where Phoebe Philo ventures, others flock. So when she opened the Céline spring/summer 2016 show in Paris with a series of white silk slips trimmed with black lace, followed by tops with corseted busts and furry dressing gowns, you could be sure that the season's trend for intimate apparel as daywear was secured.

story_article_left1

This alluring look was excellently interpreted elsewhere, too. At Givenchy, Riccardo Tisci layered monochrome bodies and camisoles with kimonos and bed coats. Alexander Wang's swan song for Balenciaga featured ivory-hued bra tops, boxer shorts and robes finished with delicate smocking and quilting, all worn with the shoe of the season - lace bedroom slippers. Alessandro Michele's Gucci offering included frilly organza gowns that revealed Victoriana knickers. Equally eccentric, Miuccia Prada at Miu Miu paired transparent negligees with gingham shirts. Raf Simons championed the simplest white cotton vest and briefs under diaphanous sheer fabrics at Christian Dior. And Dries van Noten and Rochas created retro bras so pretty you'd be a fool to hide them.

Meanwhile, Topshop Unique opted for lace nighties under blazers and floral slips with thigh-high splits. Geoffrey J Finch, creative design consultant at Topshop, said: "We felt strongly for underpinnings in our spirit of rebellious prettiness and upended conservatism, but we wanted to subvert the notion for a new spin. To dad's pyjamas, we applied delicate prints created with Wedgwood as well as bold polka dots. We lopped off trousers into coquettish shorts, shirts were amped up with French cuffs or reimagined in supple glove leather and smoking robes were truncated into glossy silk jackets. We also developed super-feminine Chantilly lace, hand-embellished with the same Wedgwood pattern and concocted cocktail wear; its prim, high-necked, long-sleeved silhouette turned upside by its barely there fabrication."

In short, spring/summer 2016 is all about flashing your frillies.

But there's nothing new about wearing underwear as outerwear, of course. Fashion has been flirting with what lies beneath for more than a century. The upcoming exhibition at London's Victoria & Albert museum, Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear (from April 16 2016 to March 12 2017), charts the practical, personal, sensual and sartorial forces that have influenced what we have worn against our skin since modern ideas of underclothes began to form. The show comprises over 200 objects that explore the evolution of underwear and reflect on society's changing attitudes towards the body, gender, sexuality and morality.

V&A curator Edwina Ehrman explained: "Underwear is intriguing because, until relatively recently, once it had been purchased it wasn't seen outside of the bedroom or home, so there's a certain mystery attached to it. Before the 20th century, for example, men's shirts were categorised as underwear. It was considered bad manners to expose the sleeves, but displaying freshly laundered cuffs and a decorative shirtfront demonstrated the wearer's income and privileged lifestyle." In the 18th century, linen and muslin petticoats and chemises were worn under clothes for hygiene and comfort, while crinolines, corsets, bustles and men's body belts smoothed and moulded the figure to better suit the fashions of each era. One corset in the exhibition dates from 1890 and creates a 19-inch waist using austere whale boning.

The term lingerie was born in France in the late 19th century when silk and lace began to decorate women's underclothes - the same time as ready-made underwear became commonplace in Europe. A pair of Queen Alexandra's stockings, worn around 1900, feature intricate floral embroidery.

The bra was only introduced in the early 20th century and pyjamas were worn for home entertaining in the 1920s and 1930s (championed by Coco Chanel). They were succeeded by hostess gowns in the '40s and '50s - the precursor to today's loungewear.

Post WWII, designers began using underwear to push the boundaries between private and public. In the 1970s, Vivienne Westwood revisited Victorian corsetry and has continued to play with historical references ever since. Her autumn/winter 1989-90 collection includes a pair of leggings with a strategically placed mirrored fig leaf. Jean-Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler used corsets to create cyberwomen. In their hands, corsets were no longer a symbol of female oppression, but sexual empowerment. And when Gaultier created Madonna's wardrobe for her 1990 Blonde Ambition world tour - pinstriped suits with conical bras - traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity were turned on their heads.

Fashion has continued to push the boundaries of underwear as outerwear ever since, from rap stars' predilection for sagging (displaying designer underwear above low-slung jeans) to Dolce & Gabbana's wicker crinoline dress for spring/summer 2013 and from push-up Wonderbras to Acne's gender-neutral briefs. Sex and fashion have always been bedfellows, but when women choose to wear underwear as outerwear, it challenges concepts of discretion, nudity and identity. That's a seductive mix and one that we return to again and again.

This season's love affair with lingerie is partly fuelled by fashion's current mining of the 1990s for inspiration. Francisco Costa at Calvin Klein - the brand that first made the slip dress iconic (with a little help from Kate Moss in that infamous metallic see-through number) - showed multiple knitted, sequined and distressed versions. Emilio Pucci, Haider Ackermann and Stella McCartney embraced slips too. While Saint Laurent's Hedi Slimane summoned up Courtney Love in her grunge heyday - barely there babydolls with biker jackets and tiaras.

"The 1990s resurgence is complex. Politically, economically and creatively, that decade was the last time we explored different viewpoints of women's sexuality. Until now, that is," says fashion editor Marie-Louise von Haselberg, who has contributed to Crash, Dansk, Bon and V magazines and styled Kate Upton, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and BANKS. "We're seeing a new visual language today, in part led by the increase in women lending fashion imagery, such as Harley Weir. The hyper-sexualised version of women that's been the mainstay of fashion advertising isn't the only version we want to see anymore. In fact, it's mirroring our current conversation about gender and what that means for our future."

Nailing the trend now is all about looking powerfully languid. Wearing pale, loose pieces with minimal fuss feels refreshingly sexy. Leave the full-on glamour to celebrities like Rihanna. Instead pair sensuous camisoles with tuxedo tailoring or denim, wear a polo neck under a sultry slip dress or throw an oversized cardigan over the top.

KLûK CGDT has always loved the lingerie look. "There's a naughtiness associated with exposing what is traditionally hidden and a certain bravado that emboldens the wearer. Elizabeth Taylor in a white satin and lace negligee for Cat On A Hot Tin Roof is an eternal inspiration," says Malcolm Klûk, one half of the hugely successful South African brand. "We have always used transparencies and lace in our designs and love layering in such a way that simultaneously reveals and conceals. There is a fine line between sexy and slutty so we try to edit, to tease, to create a visual conversation and leave room for the imagination." So whatever you do ladies, keep your knickers on.

THE UNDERWEAR AS OUTERWEAR TREND IS FOR GENTS TOO

It's not just women who are having all the fun with underwear as outerwear. Looking forward to autumn/winter 2016, menswear follows suit by embracing bedwear as daywear. So if you're the type of lazybones who dashes to the corner store in your dressing gown in the vain hope that no one will notice, then you're in luck. Wee Willie Winkie could have been the muse for Katie Eary's silky striped pyjamas exposing models' sock suspenders. At JW Anderson, flaneurs wore their cartoon cat and snail-printed dressing gowns with Perspex-studded chokers. And at Roberto Cavalli it was all about Hugh Hefner-esque animal print and floral robes. Local menswear maverick Rich Mnisi toughens up the look by presenting striped pyjamas with utility detailing.

Helen Jennings is editorial director of nataal.com.