Did someone say cute everyday lingerie that feels good and keeps ~everything~ in place? To find a bra or panty that accentuates your figure and looks amazing while doing it is the holy grail of women around the world. And, Marks and Spencer is just the place to refresh your collection. If you ask us, we are tots in love with the styles, design details and that colour palette — so you know we had to sit down with the Head of Lingerie Design, Soozie Jenkinson to pick her brain.
Courtesy of Marks and Spencer
Cosmopolitan Middle East: What inspires you the most when it comes to designing a new Lingerie collection?
Soozie Jenkinson: There are lots of places that we take inspiration from; changes in lifestyles, what’s happening in fashion is really important because we have to know what’s happening in clothing apparel to know what kind of underwear you know customers are going to look for that’s super important and then just having really open and honest conversations with women and finding out what they’re looking for, what their needs are, and what they actually don’t like about the underwear they’re wearing and therefore what kind of solutions can we design around to make things better.
C: What do you define as a trend, and do you stick to trends when marketing a new Lingerie collection?
S: For me, trends can mean lots of different things to lots of different people I think always being modern and relevant is really really important. We have products; bras and our ranges that have been customer favourites for the last ten years let’s say, but along the way we’ve tweaked them slightly to make sure that they’re still customer favourites but they’re still more relevant and that might be in a bra. But, I would not say that we’re slaves to trends at all because we’re leading the market in lingerie and we’re creating a lot of the lingerie trends and some of that is about the fabrics we use, the colours we choose, the prints that we design.
Via Instagram
C: What is the most difficult thing women find when shopping for Lingerie and how can you counteract it?
S: I mean that’s a really good question because shopping for lingerie can be very complicated, we have curated our ranges; if I’m talking about bras, there are four key areas really. Smoothing bras; a T-shirt bra, a range of which we call body and we have four ranges within that, we have a lace range so we separate our lace ranges out so we know customers shop for something smoothing or something lacy.
Then we have a range of Solutions so we have a sports bra offer, a nursing maternity bra offer, first bra offer, a strapless offer, a post-surgery offer for women who may have undergone surgery following breast cancer and we then have a Collections range which are brands like By Boutique and Rosie.
C: How have you seen lingerie trends at M&S and in the industry change within the last 25 years?
S: Well, there has been a dramatic change I would say in the last 25 years. I’ve been at M&S for more than 25 years so I’ve seen it and I’ve been part of it. I’ve been really privileged to be part of that, today I genuinely do not believe that women will sacrifice comfort for style whereas, I think 25 years ago actually they would get the look. Whereas I think people expect our products to be comfortable and stylish and also perform, even though it might be a shaping piece of underwear, we have to work really hard to make sure that it’s the most comfortable piece of shaping underwear it can possibly be.
Colour is another huge change. When I first joined M&S, there were five colours in the palette that was in underwear – red, navy, cream, black and white and that was it, it was very very limited. Now you know, colour makes such a huge impact and what’s brilliant about having lots of colour choices in our range is: again it’s up to the customer about how she styles it so it could be something that you want to match with your outfit or it could be something that you actually want to make a statement with, like your intentionally deciding to have a colour clash.
C: What are three things you think women should keep in mind when buying lingerie?
S: Fit, comfort and support, and I also think underwear is a really personal purchase and actually you can experiment quite a lot with underwear, so I think to be creative with your underwear choices. I think because lingerie is often dictated by how we feel because it’s something you know it’s the first thing you put on at the beginning of the day; probably the last thing you’re going to take off and actually.
C: How do you think M&S has shaped the lingerie industry?
S: I mean I have to be honest I am very proud and I’m very honoured and privileged to have been in this role for over 25 years and I don’t take it lightly. I mean somebody said earlier that we’re dressing a huge percentage of women around the world and I’m responsible for the design direction of that. So, it’s a huge responsibility but it is also a huge team effort.
I think the way we’ve been able to shape the underwear of many women around the world is by really listening to what they want, alongside thinking about forward trends because we have to be in tune with what customers are wanting rather than being so far ahead of the market that actually it’s irrelevant so it is about combining trends with features, benefits and innovations that actually the customers are just always going to go for that M&S bra.