Can Armpit Hair Sell Lingerie?
Miley Cyrus keeps her armpit hair long and likes to show it off on Instagram (although she’s mysteriously a big proponent of the bikini wax), Jemima Kirke showed off her unshaved underarms on the red carpet at the 2015 CFDA Fashion Awards, and pits dyed a color or covered in glitter were both top trends of 2015. Now, overgrown armpit hair has made its commercial fashion debut in the & Other Stories ad campaign.
The H&M-owned brand, which arrived stateside last year, has a lingerie line in fabrics and colors to match their collections, with items this Fall/Winter coming in pastel pink, deep maroon, jet black, bright red, starlet, scarlet ibis, and spirit animal prints. To sell it, the company’s taking a different approach than its standard clothing line ads, because it recognizes the “importance of approaching these stories with another perspective.”
For that reason, & Other Stories strived to show that the “ideal female body is one-of-a-kind” and women should embrace “beauty such as scars, tattoos, and birth marks rather than altering them.” Three women encapsulate this — Helin Honung, blogger and yoga enthusiast, Kelsey Lu McJunkis, cellist and model, and Ida Jagerfelt, copywriter — by posing in the offerings. Each show off their body art, unretouched figures, and even body hair.
Sure armpit hair is trendy, but will it sell dainty lace lingerie? It’s certainly not taking a page out of Victoria’s Secret’s successful playbook. But bras and underwear don’t discriminate.
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