I was in the Zara fitting room trying on what was possibly the cutest white button-up on Tuesday when I looked in the mirror under those awful fluorescent lights and had an epiphany. It’s one of those realisations you have when you look at yourself and suddenly notice something you’ve been oblivious to before. In my case, I realised I was wearing the most basic, practical undies imaginable.
Five pack cotton knickers from M&S that I’d grabbed on some frantic shopping trip three months prior. Also, strangely enough, I felt no shame about it. In fact I felt liberated.
This came just moments after having been perusing Instagram and seeing influencer after influencer posting about their new matching lingerie sets, photographed sat on their immaculate bed with perfect lighting. Who lives like that?
Who matches their underwear to their mood board every day?
Who wants to spend their whole day fretting about straps slipping and scratchy lace? Not me, that’s who. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been speaking to women in fashion about what they really wear on a day-to-day basis under their clothes.
I work in fashion – I write about it, I edit magazines covering it – but even I don’t know what the average person working in my industry wears every day. Sure, we post about fancy lingerie sets on Instagram and buy pricey underwear we only wear once or twice a year. But what are we wearing when we’re getting on with our lives, spending all day in an office or running errands around town?
I decided to find out. I started by asking my friend Sarah, who styles photo shoots for magazines. She had the anecdote that kicked this whole investigation off.
We were getting coffee after she’d spent the day dressing Caroline Flack in a million dollars worth of clothing for some event (don’t remember, wasn’t my day job) when we got on the topic of undies. She burst out laughing and said “You know what’s funny? I’ll spend ages sourcing this awesome £300 top for Clare to wear in a shoot but I’m wearing £2.40 knickers from a bog standard five-pack”.
Naturally I wanted to know more. I picked the brains of pretty much every girl I work with or know that works in fashion – editors, stylists, buyers, the types who know your bag is two seasons out when they see you – and asked them the same question. What do you really wear every day?
I want to know what’s in your underwear drawer when no-one’s looking. What are you wearing under your jeans and when you go for lunch? The answers I received were… surprising, to say the least.
First off, a lot of women told me about the M&S cotton high-leg knickers. Without me even mentioning them. I barely got the question out before they’d reply “Oh god, the five- packs!!”. £12 for five pairs of knickers is £2.40 each.
Now, don’t get me wrong – they’re not the most glamorous underpants you’ll ever own but when you compare that to how much a pack of two costs from, say, Third Love or Parade, it’s hard to argue with those savings. My friend Emma (fashion editor at a major title you’ve definitely heard of) shops them online. “I tried doing lingerie shops last year,” she told me.
“Ended up buying some modal ones that were £25 for a pair. They were amazing in the store but after two washes they looked wrecked. But I’ve got M&S ones I bought two years ago that still look perfect.” They tick every box when it comes to function over fashion.
They don’t show lines under clothes (major bonus if you wear fitted clothing like I do most of the time) they don’t ride up, the cotton is soft enough that you forget you’re wearing them. They last a very long time and they don’t need to be dry cleaned or hung on a special hanging bag like some fancy lingerie does. To summarise: They allow you to, basically, forget you’re even wearing knickers.
And isn’t that the whole point? And it wasn’t just those. The seamless Brazilian briefs from M&S were mentioned by every.
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Single. Woman. I spoke to.
They’re £8 for THREE pairs. These things are unreal. I wear nothing else under jeans and they’re completely invisible.
I’ve owned similar styles from brands charging triple what M&S does for them and I cannot feel the difference when it comes to performance. Friend-of-a-friend Zahra, who has since emailed me to ask how she can buy me a bottle of wine for exposing her love of M&S basics, is also obsessed with the microfiber shorts they do for summer. “They stop your thighs rubbing without being visible under summer dresses!” she said.
Buy them every April and they last me until the end of festival season. Wedding season. Goddamn everywhere.” I could spend this whole essay listing off everything M&S do that every woman I know owns at least one of.
But I’ll finish with something that surprised me more than any other answer I received – bras. I was under the impression that women who worked in fashion wore bras from sexy brands like Figleaves or Agents of Attire or Reformation. That we spent lots of money on intricately wired, luxury bras to match our luxury lingerie.
Spoiler alert: we don’t. Every woman I asked mentioned M&S non-wired bralettes. £20 a pop? Yeah they’re not cheap, but when you compare to how much that style costs from brands like Object or Lion Meaning it feels like a steal.
“I have fancy bras I spend lots of money on for when I need good support/certain shapes,” my friend Kate told me. “But for everyday? I can wear the M&S ones all day long and they don’t make me feel like my head is going to explode through my top.” Bras from their Boutique range came up a lot too.
Specifically, the balcony bras. £24 for an underwired that, according to half the women I spoke to, fits better than anything from the department store/gallery/online retailer du jour costing £60+. I’ll admit, I was sceptical until I bought one myself. Holy crap are they good.
The fit is insane – whoever’s doing the sizing and planning cup shapes over there really knows what they’re doing. My favourite discovery though has to be the more technical offerings. Backless stick-on bras for example.
It sounds fiddly and expensive at £25 but when you consider you’ll get a year of wear out of that one bra for every single backless dress/top you own it doesn’t seem so bad. My friend Lisa is constantly at wedding or work events where a standard bra just isn’t an option. “I don’t know why I would ever spend money on that kind of bra from anybody else,” she said.
“They’re so cheap here and do the job 100%.
No excessive packaging or marketing costs for them to worry about so why should I pay more?” I will say the shapewear divided opinion – some prefer to go all out for that type of thing – but their lighter control garments are INCREDIBLE. I have the slip and it smooths everything out without making you feel like you can’t breathe or sit down.
It’s £35 but again, what competing brand offers nearly identical stuff for four times the price? I honestly think Marks and Sparks have quietly risen to the top at providing functional underwear that doesn’t need to scream its presence. There’s no haughtyness about it.
They’re not trying to be sexy or cool or high-fashion. They just get that we’re all buying underwear to wear UNDER our clothes so make sure we actually want to wear them too. It’s refreshing, and honestly pretty badass if you ask me.
I’ve since decluttered my underwear drawer and replaced most of it with stuff from M&S. No exaggeration when I say it’s improved my life. If I’m not worried about my underwear being comfortable, visible or needing dry clean only treatment then I have more mental capacity to think about important things.
Like that aforementioned white button-up and whether it matched my boyfriend jeans (it did not).
