Thong market hits rock bottom

Feb 8 2008 by Valerie Hill, Liverpool Daily Post

I’VE always regarded thongs in the same way as red underwear. No women in a sane state of mind would actually buy them herself to wear.

Yet there’s proof that a woman’s place is not in the wrong, but according to the retail statistical index, in the thong.

Apparently just five years ago these human cheese-cutting wires accounted for a third of the underwear bought by women, popularised by the WAGs – the omnipresent footballers’ wives and girlfriends. But proving what goes round, comes round (across and underneath to join with that bit at the front), the G-string market has now snapped.

Sales have dropped to an all- time low in the last five years as the thong has become synonymous with chaviness and the bare-cheeked vulgarity of WAG-iness.

Showing how fashion lurches between extremes, large knickers are now poised to take over the world and cover even larger swathes of female flesh.

Bridget Jones’s big pants or boy shorts are seen to be kinder in emphasising the figure. So big pant sales are pulling up, while thongs are coming down (which they’ve probably being doing for years at WAG parties).

It’s one of those paradoxes of life that thongs and big pants are equally effective in eradicating VLP.

This is the visible panty line lurking beneath clothing that some women regard with a horror akin to catching the bubonic plague.

This is a winning reason, says fashion writer Lowri Turner, in spite of the discomfort felt when first worn.

“They are also sexy and – this is a very big AND – they can also make your bottom look smaller. The rule for sexy knickers really is less is more.”

Yet, unlike the thong, big pants hug and hold the posterior in a way which the minimalist clothing could never do.

And as we get older, we need all the extra support we can get. Emotional, spiritual and physical; but above all, physical.

So where did the thong come from? Was it a ruse by Tarzan telling Jane that an early autumn caused a leaf shortage and only jungle twine was available in the sales?

More likely is Harry Hill’s explanation: “When you buy a V-necked sweater, there’s a V of material missing.

“You know what they do with that? They send it to Ann Summers and she makes those fancy thongs.”

In fact, fashion historians going back hundreds of pages in scouring Heat and Closer magazine now agree that the thong came out of the spare piano wire closet in the 1990s when worn by a Gucci catwalk model.

Then a rather risqué chanteuse, Melanie Blatt, who warbles with All Saints, flashed her thong before the paparazzi as she got out of a taxi.

Never backwards in coming forwards to drop her husband in it for an extra squeeze of the publicity lemon, Victoria Beckham hinted that the boyish David liked wearing her G-strings around the house while he vacuumed.