ondear When Cora Harrington launched The Lingerie Addict ten years ago, the blog stood out from what she called a “fashion perspective,” rather than a website that aggregated PR releases or tended to be extremely sexy. Today, it has hundreds of thousands of monthly readers and feature reviews, magazine-style photo editorials, and a variety of methods for measuring your own underwear from measurement to performance. It’s also a very inclusive: As a black gay woman, Harrington knows not to think of himself as a mainstream intimate product, and uses her blog to make underwear available to everyone.
Her latest project is a book that she hopes to use when she first started buying underwear. Intimate Detail was released on August 28th to tell readers about underwear styles, pleasing cuts, when to wear underwear and how to take care of it, with beautiful watercolor illustrations. To celebrate this release, I talked to Harrington about her blog, her book, and her vision of the lingerie industry.
VICE: What motivates you to start underwear addiction?
Cora Harrington: I was dating someone at the time, I wanted to find something fun for them – I think this is a very common emotion. I searched online but I can’t find anything. I can’t find any advice, comments or suggestions about underwear. There were other underwear blogs at the time, but they were more focused on press releases and bras were suitable or editable. They don’t really focus on providing underwear advice – especially from a fashion standpoint, many fashion blogs are doing this. So I just looked around and see what I could find.
In my search, I met a pair of German branded thigh socks. They have embroidered peacocks, I have never seen such a thing before. I mean, I grew up in the South, so when I grow up, I go to church, you wear tights – you go to work, you must wear pantyhose. So I am familiar with the concept of socks, but I have never seen anything beautiful and decorative. And I feel that I have been deprived of the world because many people just buy underwear from what they see in Victoria’s secrets or what they see at Target or Wal-Mart. It feels like I found the world, almost another reality, the underwear is very beautiful.
