December 4, 2005
The Talk - The New York Times
Going Undercover
By JAMES GORMAN
Have you heard this one? True story. A man walks into a bar. He sits down at a table with Elle Macpherson. He says, "What are you wearing?"
"What am I wearing? What underwear am I wearing? Let me think. This is so embarrassing. It's like a short and a bra."
O.K., the man is me. It isn't a bar; it's a trendy Manhattan restaurant. And since Macpherson is in the process of expanding her underwear company, Elle Macpherson Intimates, I figure this is a kind of investigative journalism. Macpherson is not so sure.
Also, given her history in modeling, acting and managing a career that, she says, is all about the body, I don't believe she's embarrassed. Still, I am. So I appreciate the gesture.
After a pause, as I am about to direct the questioning to some other topic, she says: "I can't believe I answered. You ask, 'What underwear are you wearing?' And I tell you! What is that about?"
It's about the underwear industrial complex, the panty-ocracy, or whatever you want to call it. Clearly, the makers of bras, briefs, camisoles and all other once-upon-a-time unmentionables have made their products not just mentionable but also unavoidable. Underwear rules the world or, at the very least, Times Square.
It's also big in Queens, or it was when two billboards showed off Elle Macpherson Intimates in intimate, 12-story detail to drivers on the Long Island Expressway. Sadly, the billboards incurred the wrath of city officials and were ordered removed.
In a world where such a sight is increasingly commonplace, it's hard to imagine an inappropriate question. Nonetheless, I'm not used to having lunch with a supermodel underwear designer, so I find the situation somewhat daunting. But I don't give up. Some journalists I know have to talk to C.E.O.'s about earnings. I just happen to have the underwear beat. As Macpherson eats a pizza with extra truffle oil, she shows very little hesitance in discussing breasts, bottoms, seduction and her philosophy of underthings.
"I truly believe that women, when they're empowered - by their femininity, by their Venus, by their sexuality - that it's so positive for the earth," she says. "It's positive for the earth because women are the nurturers of the environment, they're the givers of love, they are the warmth, the protection, the centeredness of the family. For me, my idea is that if we embrace this femininity, embrace this sexuality, we have a much healthier society."
For example, says Macpherson, who is from Australia and lives in London: "I realized that women had a special pair of knickers that they call their Saturday-night pants. And that's what they wore if they thought they were going to get lucky." She says she wanted to re-educate women so that every night, in terms of underwear, could be Saturday night.
The whole "getting lucky" aspect of underwear reminds me of my puzzlement over lingerie ads. Why do they look designed to make men drool when, in fact, they are selling to women? "Women look at other women's bodies, and they like the same thing that men like," Macpherson says. "Women are curious about other women, and they talk about it."
We go on to discuss bras for big breasts and little breasts, structure for support, what sort of décolletage looks good and, for small-breasted women, the importance of bras just to "cover your nipples." "Do you believe we're having this conversation?" she asks.
Not really.
Finally, I ask a practical question. Does she have advice for men who buy lingerie as a gift? Go for color, she says. And "find out her exact bra size. Chances are it's a 34-C." This puts me in a tough spot, but I can see the follow-up question hanging there, waiting to be asked.
If only I were Ed Murrow, or better, George Clooney. So I ask, not for myself but for our female readers, "What size are you?"
"Thirty-four-B," she says, without blinking. "I'm a 34-B."
her candid style, even though it's not very orginal. 
