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Striptease lessons take off in Paris

DESPITE yips from feminist critics and yawns from blase shoppers, striptease classes being held at a landmark Parisian store are an ideal accessory for other lacy items on sale here.

Galeries Lafayette, which has unfurled a newly-refurbished lingerie department, is not only offering its customers pricey underthings, but is now giving lessons on how to remove them, too.

The "lessons in seduction" on offer to 200 women - and only women - in the intimacy of a private top-floor salon in the store, teach how to slip off a garter (smoothly) and how to unbutton a shirt (from the bottom up).

They also offer the valuable lesson that, even in a down-and-out economy groping for novelty, sex continues to sell.

The explicit nature of the course - a scantily-clad strip-tease artist directed by a choreographer during a half-hour session - has rankled some feminists, but browsers in the packed "Red Hot Boulevard" lingerie section at the weekend were on the whole appreciative.

"It's not a half-bad way to make some money.... And at any age, there's always something new to be learned," Pierre, a retiree from western France, said with a wink at his wife Yvette.

"Yes, I would have liked to (take) the course... though not to be on stage, naturally!" she added.

Shopping in a section dedicated to G-strings, Eric said he had made the trip to Paris from his hometown, Nantes, especially for this visit. "Well, for this, and the construction fair, and the Pink Floyd exhibit," the 32-year-old carpenter added.

"Unfortunately," piped in his 25-year-old friend Nicolas, "our girlfriends aren't taking the course," adding that striptease was "a profession in itself".

Sexually explicit images in fashion have spent their shock value, having run the course from elite "porno chic" advertising from the likes of Gucci and Prada, to fleshy copies by knock-off brands.

Galeries Lafayette, confronted with the now-commonplace element of mere sexiness, has through its course imagined a new way to pitch products, in a year of plummeting profits.

Some 30 per cent of the customers at its flagship store, on Paris's Boulevard Haussmann, are tourists, but their numbers have dwindled this year due to the Iraq war, a poor global economy and the outbreak of the SARS disease in Asia.

Other sex-tinged activities at the store have spiced up offerings for local customers - including a speed-dating service and a weekly late-night singles' night at the store's supermarket section.

They have also helped shift the image of the store, a renowned but somewhat staid Parisian institution opened over a century ago, to being "young and impertinent", the group spokeswoman said.

"We are a reflection of trends, our ambition is to reflect the trends," she said.

"Striptease is not just for the young and trendy. We're trying to popularize something which is going to be a huge social phenomenon."

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