What’s the one thing women most often say in the fitting rooms of a lingerie store? Kate has spent the better part of a decade working in them and says there’s one thing she hears the most – and it’s likely not what you’d guess.
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Kate has worked in some of the swankiest lingerie stores both here, and abroad (including a stint in Paris and London).
She’s knocked on the door of fitting rooms (or responded to the bell call) as women of walks of life have tried on underwear – often for a special occasion.
“Sometimes they’re looking for a classic nude t-shirt bra, but most of the time I’m seeing women for the first time who are after the right bra to go under their ball dress, their wedding dress, Valentine’s day, a special date,” she says. “Sometimes it’s that they’ve just had a baby or just stopped breastfeeding, and just want to find something to reclaim their body. I had one woman who came in often who was a CEO and wanted very feminine, but powerful lingerie that she could wear under her office wear, as a little boost to herself so she felt more powerful and more feminine under these grey suits.”
Kate says that before she started this job she’d predict that the one thing that most women would say to a sales assistant in fitting rooms would be some version of, ‘How do I look?/Do I look okay?/Does this suit me?’
But that’s not the case.
“Women do say those things to me,” she says, “but the thing I hear most often is: ‘I’m sorry’”
“I’ve heard so many different versions of it: ‘I’m sorry, I have just finished breastfeeding and my boobs have disappeared’, ‘I’m sorry, I have no time to go to the gym’, ‘I’m sorry, I’m heavier than I was a couple of years ago’, ‘I’m sorry, I have a weird rash on my back, but it’s not contagious’, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so pale I missed my spray tan appointment!’. It’s funny, because really, I’m in there to make sure the fit is perfect and my clients look the best they possibly can. I’m not in there to pass judgement on how their body looks, but so many of my customers apologise for an aspect of how their body looks. It’s actually really sad.”
Kate says she’s still surprised by how many women apologise for how their body looks and how many women point out a ‘flaw’ to her, that she can’t see.
“If I had a dollar for every woman who said, ‘I don’t have the body to pull this off/I’m too old/I’m too big to wear this, I’d be a rich woman,” she says. “It’s such a shame because when I walked into that changing room, I would be thinking, wow, this woman looks amazing. It’s a shame we can’t see ourselves that way.