No More Tighty Whities

Friends and family were blunt, rude even, when Steven Lien told them about his small-business venture last year.
"Everyone was like, `There's no way that will work,'" recalled Lien a onetime ski-shop proprietor and information technology specialist in Portland, Ore.
Now, almost five months since Under U 4 Men opened its doors, Lien could open a restaurant just to serve humble pie. Instead, he is planning two more branches. His small specialty store, which sells only novel or little-known brands of men's underwear, has outperformed even his own forecast.
"The store was profitable within 30 days," he said. "And I didn't open on Gay Street, U.S.A. I opened on Main Street, U.S.A.''
Novelty underwear, for decades the butt of jokes, has, in the last two to three years, turned into a serious business, capturing a significant share of the $1.1 billion (U.S.) men's knit-underwear market. Briefs in bright colours, zany prints, new materials and daring cuts are undermining classic white briefs which, last year, dipped below 50 per cent for the first time in decades – if not ever.
The selections are offbeat and atypically masculine: the cheery rainbow of 20 colours of American Apparel. Bamboo fabric from C-IN2 and soy-based fabric from 2(x)ist. graphics in Andrew Christian's new line. And, unlikeliest of all, the little-boy, Underoos-inspired fire trucks, motorcycles and hot dogs all over Ginch Gonch underwear – they're fairly crying out to be called underpants.
Not since men stepped out of drab, dark suits during the 1960s Peacock Revolution has there been such variety. It disproves a cherished maxim of men's wear: that a man is most loyal to his brand of underwear than to any other article of clothing. Now connoisseurship trumps loyalty. Once-tentative customers now log on to sites like InternationalJock.com, one of the most comprehensive men's underwear Web sites, selling brands like Justus Boyz, Wax, Play, Kyle, Artificial Flavor and AussieBum.
"There's been an explosion in printed underwear, low-rise underwear and different kinds of boxer briefs," says John Sievers, an owner of InternationalJock.com, who said that his business has doubled in three years. Underwear by C-IN2 and Andrew Christian, artfully constructed with seams or straps to make the most of a man's profile, has done extremely well, he adds. "All the Wonderbra sort of technology for men – we sell tons of stuff like that.''
As they say, it's all about packaging. For American Apparel, a clash of squeaky clean and slightly raunchy – showing an unshowered, unshaven guy in pink briefs with white piping – has helped sell more than a million pairs of its briefs in the two years since they were introduced, according to Dov Charney, the line's founder. And the wacky website for Canadian company Ginch Gonch (slang for underwear) offers a YouTube-style wedgie contest and scads of naughty double entendres. The racy-goofy approach is working: Ginch Gonch sold 1.8 million pairs of underwear last year at about $30 (Cdn.) each, according to Jason Sutherland, the line's owner, who said he expects to double that volume this year.
"They're getting away from the old pasty colours," said Maurice Webb, an infrastructure contractor and an Army veteran based in Iraq, who stumbled onto the Justus Boyz site when searching for new underwear. "They've got a lot of fun stuff now."
At first the site – and name – made him nervous, but the desert camo briefs he bought were a hit. "I got a lot of compliments," he said. "They're more form-fitting, and they're also more comfortable.''
He's not alone in his reaction. From 2004-06, U.S. sales of men's knit underwear rose 5.3 per cent, to 397 million pairs, according to NPD Group, which tracks clothing trends. The gains were from styles in patterns (up 23 per cent, to 48 million pairs) and solid colours (also up 23 percent, to 156 million), including the blacks and greys that mainstream makers like Calvin Klein and Hanes added to their lines.
Similarly, sales of traditional briefs fell 9.4 per cent while non-traditional styles – boxer briefs, bikinis and thong styles – were all up.
"It's becoming very exciting," said Marshal Cohen, the chief analyst at NPD. "For a long time it seemed like, if you wanted to wear briefs, you couldn't have any personality.''
And because underwear is one of the few forms of men's wear that women buy more of (for men) than men do, Cohen said the trend would likely continue as the boyfriends and husbands start to replacement-shop for themselves.
Briefs, introduced in 1934 and called jock-style, Y-front or bathing-suit underwear – because they were styled after a French swimsuit – got an indelible endorsement four years later as the (blue) underwear of choice of a nerdy yet steel-built reporter named Clark Kent.
Meanwhile, old-school white Y-fronts recently got a more dubious superhero plug as the costume of Captain Underpants, the chubby middle-aged title character in a children's books series.
Just 25 years ago, Calvin Klein took aim at the underwear industry when he turned an Olympic pole-vaulter into his own sexed-up version of Michelangelo's David, this time in white cotton briefs. Klein, who sold the company in 2002, secured a spot for his Calvins among the top five best-selling underwear brands, where they remain. Now Calvin Klein is the Goliath, and if the slingshots wielded today are more in the spirit of spitballs and water balloons, that's the idea. This youthful version of masculinity is, while still sexy, far from the ripped and buffed torsos that became a cliché of men's underwear packaging "is the man I am not, and the man I cannot be," said Charney of American Apparel. "You know, nerdy is in.''
Department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue have heeded the trend, selling designer underwear from D&G and Dsquared alongside the collections, not in the underwear department. In the last two years Saks has doubled the brands of underwear it carries. Though sales of specialty underwear were once driven by gay men, that has changed, even if they are still more-daring consumers of new styles. "It's absolutely not a gay thing," said Michael Macko, the men's fashion director at Saks. "Straight guys want to be sexy, too.''
Countering another preconception, he added: "It's not necessarily a young guy buying them. Who doesn't want to dress younger?
"No one wants to think, `I want to look old and grumpy.' They think, `I want to look younger and better.' ''
Indeed, Cohen of NPD suggested that Viagra was helping to fuel the trend, putting guys who had been benched back in the underwear game.
"It's for young guys as well as the boomer consumer," he said.
In other words, you are only as old as your underwear.
from The Toronto Star