Not Exactly News: The Slip Is Hot

A friend pointed me to this story "What's Sexy Now?" in The New York Times this morning about slips being hot.

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.

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.

Not exactly news, I must say. I've been into slips, and out of them, for quite a while.