Fredrick’s of Hollywood

Each generation, like the last, tends to think that it is the first to think of something. They tend to get a shock when they find out that, a few decades back, their parents and even their grandparents were up to the same things they have been doing. This is particularly the case with the current generation, who look at the permissive society in which we live and think that this is the first time that people have been so open about their pleasures – and then find out that the 1960s saw a society where love was free and parties were endless. It is always pretty galling to learn that your innovation, your special thing that seems so unique and personal, has been done before, and been done bigger and better.

This must be how a lot of lingerie retailers feel when they hear the story of Fredrick’s of Hollywood – established in 1946. Now in its seventh decade, Fredrick’s is truly the elder statesman (or states-shop, if such a thing exists) of lingerie retail. To think that the people who shopped there for corsets that would have been considered rather titillating back then - and even now might raise an eyebrow or two – are now getting towards their eighties and nineties – and perhaps older in some cases… well, it rather gives the lie to the idea that this society in which we live today is some sort of groundbreaker on the hedonism front. If it is any consolation, there is the fact that a lot of young men were just getting back from a bloody war and were happy to be alive, and that their betrothed young women were very relieved to see them.

The old store where those purchases were made was the home to Fredrick’s for fifty-nine years, until the great traditional old store moved in 2005 from its old home on Hollywood Boulevard to a more modern home near the corner of Hollywood and Highland Avenue. While the old space was home to the Lingerie Museum and the Celebrity Lingerie Hall of Fame, the new store is dedicated purely to selling a wide range of intimate items including sexy lingerie. It does display corsets and bras which have been designed by celebrities for auction, but these are more in the line of attractions for customers who will nonetheless hopefully walk out the door clutching a bag containing all sorts of lingerie.

If the old building could talk, though, what things it would say. For example, in 1992 the store was the victim of looting as part of the LA riots in the aftermath of the acquittal of four LAPD officers in the famous “Rodney King” case – only for the looter, who had helped himself to celebrity lingerie including a pair of bloomers which had once belonged to Ava Gardner and a push-up bra worn by Katey Sagal (Peg in TV’s Married With Children and more recently the voice of Leela in Futurama) – to get an attack of conscience and return the items via the conduit of a Catholic pastor.

See, that’s another thing. The older generation have always got the best stories.