Agent Provocateur founders honoured for services to knickers

Agent Provocateur Co-Founders Joseph Corré and Serena Rees have been named MBEs in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, for services to the fashion industry. Hear hear I say.

It’s easy to forget that the reason there is pretty, sexy, colourful underwear on the High Street is directly due to the influence of AP. Until Rees & Corré launched the label twelve years ago, lingerie shopping was pretty much confined to one of three places: Marks & Spencers & other department stores etc for black & white basics, little boutiques or Soho sex shops.

AP’s confident and powerful celebration of a woman’s sexuality filtered down to the High Street: their genius was to make it perfectly acceptable for a man or a woman to buy a filmy fuchsia peephole chiffon bra without looking like they were coming over all smutty.

Betty Jackson was also named CBE for services to the fashion industry, and Brian Godbold, a former chairman of the British Fashion Council, was awarded OBE for services to fashion design.