The director calls motion and the merriment unfolds as four young females sip beverages by the pool, cavort on downy beds, muse about their futures and sprint together Hollywood Boulevard in pursuit of a vanished thriller bag.
That pretty much sums up the doings in “Hollywood Dreams,” a 12-moment online video produced by the Reliable Brand names Group, the homeowners of Frederick’s of Hollywood, and PYPO, an on line comedy platform for rising expertise. The video’s stars may perhaps not seem just like you and me, but they do propose a hybrid of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” and an early episode of “Girls.”
Billed as an action mini-series, the video signifies an effort by Frederick’s, the fabled naughty undie manufacturer, to swim with the tide, joining a roster of lingerie upstarts placing a wholesome reality spin on their marketing campaigns.
“Our intent is to widen our audience and get to a millennial buyer,” explained Alexandra Taylor, the senior vice president for advertising and lifestyle design for A.B.G. (It owns some 50 brands, which includes Hickey Freeman, Nautica and, as of November, Barneys New York, and purchased the company out of personal bankruptcy in 2015.) It hopes, it would seem to be, to sidestep the pitfalls that have dogged Victoria’s Mystery that company’s aggressively steamy marketing alienated youthful people and value the manufacturer a marked dip in revenue.
The project, directed by Stephanie Laing, whose credits contain “Veep” on HBO and “Dollface” on Hulu, is also a bid by A.B.G. to update its impression and court women of all ages who may well be too younger to keep in mind the balconette bras, split-crotch panties and lavishly padded girdles that once ended up the company’s ribald stock in trade.
The bet is that a youthful audience will react to the show’s protagonists — like the influencers Hrush Achemyan and Amanda Steele Blair Beeken, a comedian and Ellie Lee, a tv host — as living billboards for a model they may well not usually know.
The new search of Frederick’s is comfortable bodysuits, softly structured bralettes and camisoles worn more than or less than jackets, T-shirts and tattered jeans to reflect existing street design — a move that deviates sharply from its heritage.
Recognized in 1947, the firm can claim a string of improvements. Frederick Mellinger, its founder, is credited with inventing, among the other novelties, the force-up bra, falsies and padded girdles, and even with introducing the bikini in the United States.
In its 1950s glory years, the organization placed a top quality on glamour, venturing onto untested terrain by selling an Americanized model of French lingerie alongside wispy negligees and slinky attire with an hourglass shape.
Frederick’s was also a person of the 1st established lingerie models to woo a mass customer, publishing racy catalogs and opening in malls, though some of its kinkier wares were being advertised chiefly in the again pages of men’s pulp magazines.
Its alternately coy and candid catalog duplicate would very likely elevate eyebrows today. A page headlined “Men Really like Fannies” highlighted an “open-end” force-up quick that uncovered the derrière. Yet another introduced the with an open crotch “for intimate indiscretions.”
By the mid-1980s, although, stale promoting and cheesy workmanship had tainted the company’s impression. Seen commonly as a faintly comical adult novelty model, its underwear were being adopted in the ’90s by more youthful customers as campy Halloween dress in.
Much more current efforts by the firm to update and elevate its image integrated a Dita Von Teese for Frederick’s of Hollywood line, launched in 2007 but unaccountably discontinued.
She was writing on the situation of a new Megan Fox assortment adverts featured the actress, vamping in a lacy all-in-one. “Who accurately are these photographs meant to attract?” Ms. Harrington chided. “A superstar encounter simply cannot preserve a unexciting, uninspired merchandise line.”
Nor has it assisted that in showcasing “real” females, Frederick’s is a tardy come-lately. In 2004, Dove soar-commenced the movement toward authenticity in natural beauty and lingerie advertising and marketing with a “Real Beauty” marketing campaign that confirmed several girls with differing but relatable system styles, stripped to their underwear.
A lot more than five many years ago, Aerie, a apparel and lingerie label owned by American Eagle Outfitters, touted inclusivity with an #AerieREAL campaign showcasing approachable seeking products donning carefully structured lingerie.
Rihanna frequently raised lingerie’s glamour quotient with Savage x Fenty, the line paraded in blockbuster reveals with in fact varied forged of models.
Even Victoria’s Mystery, in a go to reclaim industry share, clambered aboard the inclusivity coach very last 12 months, naming Barbara Palvin, a curvy, however not moreover-dimension, design, as its most up-to-date Angel. In October, the firm signed Ali Tate Cutler, its 1st Size 14 product.
Irrespective of whether these kinds of gambits replicate the actuality of the regular customer is open up to debate. As Amanda Mull wrote in The Atlantic: “According to the definitions delivered by purchaser brands, we’re remaining with two types of acceptability: these who are youthful, skinny, and symmetrical sufficient to conform so closely to typical American magnificence ideals that they make a lot of women of all ages truly feel negative, and ‘real’ females who, these advert campaigns recommend, are merely the most conventionally attractive of every person else.”
Douglas Brundage, the founder of Kingsland, a brand name consultancy, queries Frederick’s general system. In striving for inclusivity, the organization went off the rails, stated Mr. Brundage. (His consumers contain Depop, the social procuring system, and Seed, a probiotics enterprise in Los Angeles.) He cited a sequence of missteps including questionable casting, uninspired styling and subpar acting. “It seems like they made this bizarre student film,” he said.
For all of the tweaking of its impression, Ms. Taylor insists that the corporation is not about to abandon its legacy shopper — the girl, or man, who has prolonged doted on the Frederick’s ’50s-influenced, curve-boosting corsets, frilly skivvies and nipple-liberating cone-formed bras.
Certainly, the business may possibly be greater served by reissuing high-excellent versions of some of all those archival staples, Mr. Brundage proposed. In straying from its legacy, it has only diluted its image: “They are killing the glamour,” he claimed.