Our peach ballet knickers were featured in the Sunday Express's S magazine a couple of weeks ago as part of a cute pin up inspired shoot. Unfortunately they're not £14 as printed, but the good news is that they're not orange either!

I'm sure you won't have missed the influx of vintage inspired lingerie on the catwalks recently. A few months ago I came across a vintage bra with an art deco inspired sunburst detail on the cup. I'd never seen anything like it but guessed it dated back to the 1940s. I had it on my mannequin in the office for weeks and everyone loved it, but agreed that it would be very uncomfortable to wear as there is vertical boning along the sunburst design on the cup. In the end I incorporated the stitching design into, what became, our Deco bra. Imagine my surprise when I opened February's Vogue to find bra almost identical to my original vintage piece parading down Just Cavalli's runway.

It's hard to escape the incessant doom and gloom of recession when it's plastered all over the newspapers and beaming out from every television set. The good news is that there are a few products which can truly be deemed 'recession proof', and one that is a legendary morale booster... lipstick! The idea of using makeup to 'put on a brave face' has seen us through two World Wars and several recessions. And the 'Lipstick Effect' is clearly in force today, where, despite many luxury brands suffering, makeup sales are still going strong.

Just like What Katie Did, Besame produces products with a real old Hollywood flair. The beautifully crafted metal containers, etched with art deco flourishescontain period perfect lipstick shades like Carmine and Noir Red and blusher that would produce cheeks as peachy as Rita Hayworth's. The chic little Classic Enchanting Lipsticks come in a 1940s style bullet-shaped tube (perfect for a small evening bag), and are specially shaped to help you create a film star pout. The newly introduced Voluptuous Lip Colour sets contain a full-sized, black enamel-clad lipstick, along with a matching lip pencil and ergonomically designed brush... the ultimate gift for a glamorous girlfriend! The rest of the line features equally stunning products with evocative names: Enriching Lip Glaze, Vintage Boudoir Rouge, Vintage Alluring Eye Shadows, Classic Masterliner Pencil and the Signature Compact with Cashmere Pressed Powder – which looks equally at home on a dressing table or being pulled out of your vintage handbag! If that wasn't enough to tempt you, Besame pride themselves on only using the purest, natural ingredients, and never test on animals meaning their products are as ethical as they are elegant.

The What Katie Did boutique is stocking a wide range of the luxurious Besame products, all of which are not only highly collectible, but take the art of perfect grooming from carefully covert to an overt fashion statement. And if you fancy a pillar-box red pout, but don't know where to start, you'll be delighted to hear that almost every staff member at the boutique is a trained makeup artist! We guarantee you won't find any better vintage makeup advice anywhere else!

We launched our 2010 calendar way back in September so now that everyone has a copy it's safe to let you know about a few others (after all, even if you live in a studio apartment you've still got enough wall space for more that one calendar!) Wholesale manager Richard headed down to the Hard Rock Cafe on Tuesday evening for the launch of the Pin Up For Heroes Calendar. Pin Up for Heroes is a charity which supports the armed forces and is one we feel very strongly about. The calendar was styled by What Katie Did stockists Pandora's Choice and you'll see a range of our lingerie, as well as that of other retro lingerie designers in the calendar. The calendar can be purchased here.

Our second recommendation Sabina Kelley's pin up calendar. In case you didn't know, Sabina is a very well known American pin up model who resides in Las Vegas. You might be able to tell by looking at her legs that she's an ex showgirl! She's been on the cover of just about every alternative magazine around and also finds time to write a column for Car Kulture Deluxe. She's selected our Striptease ballet knickers and bralette to wear for the December page of her calender (if you want to see more of Sabina then don't forget to check out her pin up playing cards: edition 2 is now available).

Nicole and the girls at The Hourglass must be some of the friendliest pin ups around. Nicole runs a photographic make over service for aspiring pin ups and this is their third calendar. Even if you're all 'calendared out' be sure to check out the Hourglass forum which is full of interesting advice on vintage glamour.

Saturday morning saw me up far too early to catch the Eurostar to Paris for Mode City, a huge lingerie trade show. I grabbed the Saturday Times to read on the way and was excited to find that Liberty of London had included a magazine about their AW09 collections in with the paper. It was only included with newspapers in the London region so I was very lucky to be in London on that day. Inside they devoted two pages to their new lingerie ranges and included a full page on What Katie Did featuring our Glamour corselette. A smaller insert picture featured our Lulu lingerie.

Once in Paris I headed down to the show and was pleased to see a lot of small English boutique brands showing. Most of the other companies showing were rather bigger so it was nice to see so much innovation coming out of the UK. I picked up UK lingerie trade magazine Underlines to check out our advert and saw that they'd given us a little bit of editorial too.

Of course, all work and no play makes for a rather boring weekend in Paris. Luckily Gentry Lane of the Gentry de Paris Review  had timed the dress rehearsal  of her show for the Sunday evening so I headed to the historic Casino de Paris. The show was spectacular and I'm sure that Dita alone manages to keep Swarovski crystal afloat! I have to say though, that it was the boys that got the most applause, including Warren Speed who added a little English humour to the proceedings. It was also nice to catch up briefly with English corsetier Velda Lauder and 21CP Holli-Mae during the interval.  I'm not going to give too much about the show away as it's running until 17th September - if you are in Paris then please go and see it! If you're not able to see it then keep your eyes on 21CP as Holli-Mae will be doing a full review as soon as the run has finished.

Dita performing at Gentry de Paris Review.

If you want to find out more about the Katie behind What Katie Did then head on over to The Sassy Minx who have just published a new interview with me.

Those of you who have visited our What Katie Did boutique will recognise Ruka (pictured above). Until about a year ago Ruka used to run Sugarlesque, a burlesque accessories company famous for it's fans, pasties and merkins. Ruka has spent the last year working part time in our boutique whilst revamping Sugarlesque.
Sugarlesque was relaunched yesterday as a fully fledged lingerie company which focuses on cute burlesque designs. Her first collection 'Wunderland' includes some irresistible giant gingham prints and rather saucy cupless bras, all of which are hand made in London by her own fair hands. Although Ruka has had to cut down her hours a little in the What Katie Did boutique she can still be found busily making pasties, and will still have time for running her pastie and fasinator workshops which take place in our London boutique on various Sunday afternoons.

Last week I headed down to Liberty of London who have just started selling our lingerie. Being a very 'niche' brand I was a little worried about how it was being received by customers, but was pleased to be told that it was selling very well! Liberty didn't have a lingerie department for several years. They reopened it two years ago and although they came and saw us then, they decided to focus on more premium brands at that time.

The department is a beautiful long room decorated in purple, with vintage black lingerie cabinets (which I'm lusting after!)The women who work in the lingerie department are very enthusiastic about the brand and are very knowledgeable about all the brand they stock. Although they're in the middle of a large department store, it actually feels like you're in an independent lingerie boutique - but I guess that's the way you feel in any of Liberty's departments as they're a lot more personal than other department stores (I was
in the lingerie department of Debenhams in Plymouth last weekend and honestly, I have never been in a more depressing place in my life - it took all of the powers of the girls in the Kalmora Spa on the 2nd floor to give me back the will to live!)

We have had a few people ask about Liberty's pricing -  the WKD items they stock are at the same price as you'll find online and in our London boutique. Liberty have just placed their second order so it looks very hopeful!

It's been a little quiet on the news front recently. Some of this is due to the fact that we now have a page purely for new arrivals so they won't be posted here anymore, the rest is due to the fact that we've been just too secretive to post! Our AW09 samples are almost complete and look absolutely fabulous (even if I do say so myself!) and I just can't wait to launch them in September.

To keep us going until then we do have a couple more new items which will be launched online on 1st July, and can be found in our boutique from this weekend. One of which is a really cute gingham sunsuit, which we'll also be taking to the Rockabilly Rave this weekend.

We're in Bizarre magazine this month with Slinky Sparkles  on page 30 in our Retro Bikini (which is now also available in claret red).

Vintage lingerie exhibition. The Fashion and Textile museum in London has just opened it's 'Undercover - the evolution of lingerie' exhibition which might be of interest to you. Their website
doesn't give much away but I'll be visiting in the next few weeks so will let you know if there are any goodies!

It's be another busy week at What Katie Did. In the press the lovely Annette Bette was kind enough to recommend our corsets in Fabulous magazine whilst one of our stockists, La Magia, managed to get our Raw Silk Morticia corset in OK magazine. I can assure you that our press department has also been hard at work and not just relaxing and sipping champagne!

Boutique Workshops:

We've got a few new workshops lined up in our boutique -

A few weeks ago I was in the shop with manageress Clare, putting the world to rights with Ian (who's known us since our Camden days). We were discussing shops, department stores and the like and Ian said that the only department store we should even consider was Liberty - as they were quirky like us!

Unfortunately we'd already had a meeting with Liberty a couple of years before when they were looking for designers for the relaunch their lingerie room and they decided to go for brands like Stella McCartney instead of good old WKD (which I totally understood as Stella's first lingerie collection had just been launched and looked very swanky). However, someone's ears must have been burning at Liberty as a few days later Richard received a call from them saying they were interested in stocking us.

I didn't want to say anything until an order was actually placed (although I did hint at some very exciting news a few weeks ago). Well, the order has been placed and it looks like we'll be in Liberty from July. We might not be the only retro company working with them either as I know Nina's Vintage Hair Parlour are also have discussions about doing something with Liberty for Carnaby Street's 1960s week in June. We'll keep you up to date as soon as anything's confirmed.

Well, after that exciting news it's back to basics. We're currently revamping our website and this month it was the turn of our RHT seamfree stockings to be put under the spotlight. RHT stockings started being produced in 1949 and were the first stockings to be made on circular knitting machines (seamed fully fashioned stockings were made flat with the seam put in afterwards to hold the stocking together). They didn't really take off until a decade later as the first seamfree stockings were rather ill-fitting.
Our rht (reinforced heel and toe) stockings are made from 100% non stretch nylon and are ideal if you like the feel of real nylon, but don't want the attention
wearing seams can bring.

You would have thought it would have been easy to shoot lots of seamfree stockings, after all, there are no seams to worry about! There is, however, the
photographer. Tony Nylons got quite distressed when he realised that he was shooting seamfree stockings ('no seams? what's the point in that?!') and threatened mutiny. I managed to calm him down but I know he's going to let rip
in the next issue of Nylon Flash!

Later on today we're heading up to Malvern for it's Military Show so I'm working from home this morning and was planning to update the press page - but forgot to bring the USB lead for my scanner home so I'm going to have to come up with something else!

Yesterday myself and Richard spent the afternoon with Clare in our boutique catching up on all the latest gossip and having a very important meeting. As with all very important meetings I'm afraid I can't let you know anything until it's all signed on the dotted line, if it's all signed on the dotted line. I've probably made it sound far more exciting than it actually is now! We had quite a busy afternoon in the shop with customers coming from far and wide for the London Burlesque Fest (reviews from the opening night were very good). We even had customers wandering in with a copy of the 'fresh off the press' London Burlesque Map in their sticky mitts. The London Burlesque Map includes most burlesque shops, venues and events and it's very handy if you're a visitor to London. It can be picked up free from various shops (although we've only had a couple of samples so far), from events at the London Burlesque Fest and also by mail order (for £3).

I was very much looking forward to spending time in the boutique over the London Burlesque Fest but it clashes with the Malvern Military Show so myself and Richard will be at the foot of the Malvern Hills with a lot of bargain seconds (£10 bras and suspenders, £5 knickers). This June is the 65th anniversary of the D Day landings and not only is Richard putting the finishing touches to his Jeep to take over to Normandy in June, but we've also been putting the finishing touches to our 1940s range: CC09. CC09 will be launched in the next few weeks but we'll be taking the stockings to Malvern as a little preview.

Our CC09 stockings include 100% rayon seamed stockings which are becoming very difficult to find and although ours are just as expensive as any others, sizing will be less hit and miss. In addition we'll also have stretch nylon fully fashioned stockings (below) which, being thicker, are far more hardwearing than the normal 15 denier version. The stockings are supplied by a company that normally works with the film industry who's credits include the new Chanel Film, Miss Pettigrew Presents and a host of others. I've always wondered where the film companies got their stockings from and now I know!