Women's sexy underwear is a minor but significant growth industry of late-twentieth-century Britain in the twilight of capitalism.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the rise of the lingerie industry in late-20th century Britain as a noteworthy aspect of capitalism.
Angela Carter's quote reflects on how women's sexy underwear became a notable and profitable sector in the British economy during the late-20th century, indicating broader themes of consumerism and the dynamics of capitalism. This growth industry not only demonstrates changing cultural attitudes towards sexuality and femininity but also illustrates how market forces shape personal identity and expression within the scope of capitalism.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion on the evolution of women's rights and self-expression through fashion.
She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is an unbroken egg: she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver.
Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.
Those are the voices of my brothers, darling; I love the company of wolves.
For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written β heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.
Iconic clothing has been secularized. . . . A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.
To pin your hopes upon the future is to consign those hopes to a hypothesis, which is to say, a nothingness. Here and now is what we must contend with.
Look for the woman in the dress. If there is no woman, there is no dress.
What I think I sell with my clothes is confidence, so hopefully all my dresses, my accessories, are friends to the women. When you open the closet, and your eyes are swollen, and you don't like the way you look, you go to your friends.
Donβt wear what you question, wear what you think is right for you.
The dress must follow the body of a woman, not the body following the shape of the dress.
In a Balenciaga you were the only woman in the room - no other woman existed.
Fashion is always of the time in which you live. It is not something standing alone. But the grand problem, the most important problem, is to rejeuvenate women. To make women look young. Then their outlook changes. They feel more joyous.
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