New year, new knickers?

Why undies are what you should get right first

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Bridget Jones’s pants don’t feature very large in the new movie, doubtless as she is now a stick insect. But in the 25 years since the first film came out, shape wear has ceased to be shameful… just look at Skims. I like these shorts and bra top, £36; the bottoms fix that concertina effect we can develop beneath our buttocks, so much easier than going to the gym.

I have a chequered history with undies. My mum never bought me a bra, or even talked about the need for one. Aged about 12, I snuck into her bedroom, had a rummage, and found a pink gingham girdle, which I fashioned into a bra. In my twenties, I was ashamed of my big breasts (see the photo below, where I am covering up in a big sweater and a man’s overcoat), wanted the body of a supermodel, so I had a breast reduction aged 29. Seeing my new shape in a white T-shirt in the mirror for the first time, the blood staining the fabric red, my first thought was, ‘I look so young!’ I was then working at The Sunday Times magazine, and when I returned to the office just days after the op, I found I could walk across the room without holding The Times Atlas of the World against my body to hide my breasts, and therefore avoid the stares of all the men in the room. It was liberating.

So I went from what you see above, to this, below (in Victoria Beckham bodycon).

No need for a bra at all. And how much happier do I look?

Of course, losing my breasts was about not just wanting to look like a model, but to repel men. I didn’t want the life of drudgery my mum had (I’m the youngest of seven children), or the misery my sisters seemed to go through. Being packed in, cheated on. Of course, some of that has come my way, but on the whole I have been alone, which is just how I like it.

And now I see undies as my friend, not as sailors. I have experimented with mid price brands, such as Sloggi, and with eco brands, but the eco, organic cotton knickers faded from black to a very worrying purple. A bit like my tattooed eyebrows, before I got the transplant. I find M&S a little overwhelming, although the quality and science they put into their undies, along with free fitting, is second to none. M&S were the first to bond lace seamlessly, they ditched the bulky labels, they manufacture the first all organic bra (I went to the factory in Sri Lanka to see the first ones roll off the production line).

But I keep coming back to my favourite brand: Hanro. This brand was founded in 1884 in Switzerland, making silk, cotton and wool undergarments that liberated women from corsets and stays. For the first time, undies were looser, comfier, not about pleasing men and becoming the required shape.

Hanro, from around 1910