NAOMI WATTS can work a slip like nobody's business, a gift she flaunts in the Peter Jackson remake of "King Kong." As Ann Darrow, the movie's spirited heroine, Ms. Watts whirls and shimmies like an overheated windup toy before the mighty Kong, sheathed all the while in a sliver of silk and lace.
Bruce Roberts (slip, Janet Roger)
She is but the latest in a long procession of big-screen temptresses - think of Jean Harlow, Elizabeth Taylor, Faye Dunaway - to have brought out the beast in their leading men while slinking around in a slip. But despite its glamorous provenance, the slip's appeal in recent decades has remained primarily on film. Off screen it languished, so scarce as to border on extinct, worn mostly, if at all, by women of Ms. Taylor's vintage.
"Two years ago you wouldn't have been able to find a slip in most stores," said Susan Hughes, a fashion director at Bloomingdale's. Today retailers tell a different tale, as slips, long consigned to fashion's scrapheap, are being resurrected on store racks, their aura of candied sexiness coinciding with the pervasive romanticism of the spring collections. At Bloomingdale's, which carries versions by Betsey Johnson, DKNY and Far West, sales have been strong enough to warrant adding new styles and labels for spring, Ms. Hughes said.
Monica Mitro, the spokeswoman for Victoria's Secret, said her company has expanded its slip offerings in anticipation of a boomlet. "We believe that slips are emerging as a major trend for summer and even into fall," she said. And at luxury stores like Bergdorf Goodman and popular lingerie Web sites like Figleaves, new incarnations proliferate, with most of their old-fashioned charms intact.
"We're beginning to see a new generation discover the slip," said Marshal Cohen, the chief retail analyst for the NPD Group, a market research firm. "For now slips are an undercultural movement by women shopping in more affluent stores." Most, he added, are under 40, women who as recently as a year ago would no more have thought of buying a slip than of wearing a hoop skirt. Because the trend is only now emerging, sales figures are not available, but Mr. Cohen predicted a measurable spike in slip sales by spring.
Not to be confused with the ubiquitous slip dress still enjoying a healthy retail run, the slip is distinctly of the old school, intended mainly as an underthing or for the bedroom, not for a night on the town. Its appeal is one part practical - it provides cover and a smoothing base under the filmy, sometimes clingy tops and dresses coming into stores for spring - and two parts sensual, as is evident in the sinuously contoured, lace-trimmed retro interpretations from design houses like Janet Reger, La Perla, Natori and Jonquil.
Like white lace dresses and crocheted tops, "slips are the virginal counterpoint to things that were a little bit sinister for fall," Ed Burstell, the senior vice president and general merchandise manager at Bergdorf, suggested. The latest slips are indeed pretty and innocent, yet paradoxically steamy enough to supplement, if not supplant, staples like the camisole or the thigh-grazing chemise.
"All those midriff-baring pieces have taken on a tacky nature," said Susan Rolontz, the executive vice president of the Tobé Report, a retail newsletter. "A slip is the new pristine version of sexiness."
She might have been describing one of the modestly trimmed cotton batiste slips from Vera Wang's new lingerie line, to be introduced for spring. With its slender straps and refined sheer border, it is as decorously girlie as a debutante.
Some merchants say that these sleekly elongated underthings speak to privately cherished fantasies. "They give some women back a feeling of femininity and glamour," said Lauren Borish, a senior buyer for Figleaves. Last fall the company added several coquettish new styles to its stock of functional elasticized slips from Maidenform and Spanx.
"Slips have a kind of sophistication, a sexiness that makes you feel more womanly," said Lauren Martin, a psychoanalyst in New York. She shows off her wardrobe of traditional slips under sheer blouses and skirts with slits.
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