Online retailer Freshpair.com puts intimate apparel back into the spotlight

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW YORK, NY (July 23, 2004) Get ready to uncover the covered and mention the unmentionables: It's Freshpair.com's National Underwear Day again. Following last year's wildly successful launch of this signature event, August 11, 2004, has been designated the Second Annual National Underwear Day by Freshpair, a leading online retailer of men's and women's intimate apparel.

This year, among other events planned for the day, 20 Freshpair models will be all over midtown New York proudly clad in their underwear. They'll solicit signatures for a petition to win official recognition for National Underwear Day, survey passers-by on their choice of underwear, and invite people to show a little of their own skivvies. They will also be available to talk to reporters and tape segments for TV and radio shows. People around the country are encouraged to celebrate the big day in their own way, as well as go to www.freshpair.com to sign the petition.

The reaction to similar festivities last year exceeded all expectations. From the women who revealed their bra straps in Times Square to the sanitation workers who held up traffic on Broadway by flashing their boxers, it was obvious that people are ready to celebrate what lies beneath.

"We were delighted, but not surprised, by the reaction to our launch of National Underwear Day last year. Everyone loved the idea, and a lot of people asked how they could celebrate it themselves", said Michael Kleinmann, Chief Operating Officer of Freshpair.com. "Underwear is definitely in, and more and more people are having fun with the whole concept."

Freshpair believes that underwear-”the first thing everyone puts on and the last thing they take off”-deserves a lot more recognition than it gets. Since 1327 BC, when King Tutankhamen was buried with 145 of his loincloths, to the visibility of intimate apparel in today's pop culture, underwear has always been as close to our hearts as to our bodies. Even when it isn't thought about consciously, it reflects a mood, personality, fashion sense, special occasion and so much more. We devote enough resources to it: Americans alone spend nearly $13 billion on intimate apparel each year. (In France, lingerie takes up 20% of the average woman's annual clothing budget.) And yet few ever talk about, while even fewer show it.

That changes on August 11, 2004, with National Underwear Day. Here are some tidbits about underwear (go to www.freshpair.com for these and many other intriguing nuggets of information):

• Married men change their underwear twice as often as single men;
• 8 out of 10 women wear the wrong size bra;
• 82% of women have tried on men's underwear
• 31% of men have tried on women's underwear.