The Economist always uses its back page for an obituary of some famous person. The March 25th issue said good-bye to Jacqueline Gold. She’s undoubtedly more famous in the UK in the US, because she made the Ann Summers line of sex toys and sexy outfits a £150 million business, with boutiques, online sales, and house parties.
Therefore this factual question is on Cafe Society, since it’s about fashion. The article says that in the shops:
browsers could find strip-search-policewomen’s bustiers up to size 24
I know what a bustier is, but the term strip-search-policewomen’s bustier doesn’t show up anywhere. The Ann Summers site has something called a strip search police outfit that certainly does not look like a bustier. Link spoilered as NSFW.
My wife had no clue about this either. We assumed it’s British slang for something we Americans don’t recognize. And probably outdated slang, since the Ann Summers site has no clothing called bustiers, replaced by corsets and basques.
Clue us in about the naughty minds of Brits who have special clothing for strip searches.
I would wager a guess that it’s just a bustier made up to look like a police uniform, which might not be much more than a plastic badge, the word ‘police’ on it and/or some fake handcuffs.
ETA, a google image search for ‘police bustier’ gives results that are pretty much just that.
Okay, sidebar here, does the Economist always abuse hyphens like this or is it just whoever wrote this obit? I had to find the article because seeing “strip-search-policewomen” made me think you had been infected by some malware. Just a sample from the article:
I might agree that strip-search-policewomen is a legitimate phrase properly using hyphens if I thought that strip-search-policewomen is a legitimate phrase describing anything in the real world of police. It’s like a restaurant talking about featuring ice-cream-lobster’s yarmulke.
I don’t know, but were I to wager a guess, it’s a discontinued item or an item available in store but not online. It may have at one time been a signature item, but as of now I don’t see any bustlers on the website which is odds. They used to be a staple for lingerie stores from Vickies to Agent Provocateur. Seems like themed bustlers would have been a signature item 15 years ago.
Technically, I suppose it’s a made-up phrase inspired by police department requirements for female officers to be the ones to strip-search female subjects. But AIUI the adult entertainment industry has extrapolated the concept to fictional situations that don’t include so many gender restrictions. Or garments.
