Cougar effect boosts lingerie sales as women in 40s and 50s buy risque outfits

By Katherine Faulkner

Rediscovering youth: Empowered 40 plus women have given the more seductive side of the lingerie industry a big boost after watching shows like Cougar Town starring Courteney Cox


Women of a certain age might once have accepted a dwindling love life as part of getting older.

Not any more. Sales of risque lingerie among women in their 40s and 50s have soared in recent months, according to retailers.

No longer content with ‘mumsy’ bras and pants, these women are now thought to buy more stockings, suspenders, basques, thongs and cleavage-boosting bras than women in their 20s.


They have become the fastest-growing market for sexy lingerie – inspired, retailers say, by racy on-screen role models such as Sex And The City’s Sam, played by Kim Cattrall, and Courteney Cox in the new TV show Cougar Town.

And well-to-do women in their forties and older tend to have more spending power than those in their twenties - making them an attractive prospect for luxury underwear brands.

Debenhams said its highest lingerie sales among women in their 40s and 50s are in London.


Sex and the 40s: Sex And The City, showing the bedroom antics of women and their much younger partners, is being credited with a rise in lingerie demand


Older women in Edinburgh, Brighton and Liverpool are also spending more on underwear.

The store's head lingerie buyer, Annette Warburton, said the booming sales showed women in their forties no longer thought getting married and having children should necessarily mean neglecting their love life.

She said: 'Women in their forties are being touted as the new twenties, and lingerie designers are stepping up to the mark to feed this demand


'We definitely expect the market to continue to grow in the future.'


Surveys have shown that today's 40-year-old women enjoy much more active sex lives than those of previous generations.

One third of women over forty said they were having more sex now than 20 years ago - and more than half had more orgasms.

Unlike those in their twenties, older women said they had no inhibitions when it came to spicing up their sex life
A third reported having sex in a candlelit bath, a third on the kitchen table and more than half in a car.

Annette Warburton said: 'Positive female role models in this age group, such as the women in Sex And The City, are giving the women confidence to splash out on themselves.'

Marks & Spencer has also been keen to cash in on the 'cougar' trend.


Role model: Kim Cattrall in particular has encouraged the naughty 40s boom


It has launched a range of lingerie specifically aimed at the '45 plus market' - and says that the raciest styles are proving the most popular.

Frances Russell, trading director of lingerie at M&S, said: 'We launched the Portfolio lingerie brand this season because there was a clear demand for sexy, flattering underwear for the 45 plus market.

'The range has proved to be a clear favourite with this kind of customer.

'We have recently introduced sexier shapes such as the cheeky Brazilian knicker, and that is selling particularly well.

'A bright red lacy lingerie set has also been hugely popular
Cattrall, 53, has told how playing the role of the shameless seductress helped spice up her own love life in her late forties.

She said playing Samantha Jones gave her 'courage and confidence' in real life and led to her enjoying her best ever sex in her forties with Canadian chef Alan Wyse, who was almost three decades her junior.

She said: 'It seemed to me women in their forties weren't meant to be sexual - but Sex and the City changed all that.

'Samantha was so free and open and powerful.

'Embodying the character helped to give me courage and confidence.'

Many of the luxury lingerie brands favoured by older customers are themselves the products of female 'cougars' in their forties.

Model Elle Macpherson, who is 47 and a mother-of-two, launched her own hugely successful underwear range in 1990.

And Liz Hurley, aged 44, has also marketed an underwear range at a more mature market.


source :dailymail