Back 2005, much of the press was fooled by the emergence of GPS panties—underwear with secret tracking devices and even pulse monitors jealous husbands and concerned fathers could plant in target underwear drawers. Panchira’s (Japanese slang for “show me your panties”) controversial undies turned out to be part of a web-traffic contest.
Guess who won? Crying While Eating came in a respectable second, though. I expected to never hear of such a thing again, even though the pranksters said they received tons of real orders and partnership proposals. When I saw them pop up today I thought it was a pretty audacious move to try and prank the whole world again.
Only it’s not a prank this time, and it’s not so covert either. Brazilian lingerie maker Lucia Iorio says her GPS lingerie collection is more about fun and games, labeling the line “Find Me If You Can.” The remarkable unmentionables carry a bulky, pager-sized box the wearer can turn on and off at her discretion, so not exactly high tech.
She also says women are interested in the lingerie “for protection,” which makes a weird kind of sense I suppose. The AFP made it sound like there’s been a big controversy about the lingerie among feminists, who’ve compared the underwear to modern day chastity belts. If so, they’re hard to find online—most searches bring back only the widely syndicated newswire report devoid of any real useful information as to where to buy it (not that I want to) or specific feminists opposed. One can imagine, however, an angry abusive husband demanding to know why the device was turned off.
After some extensive digging around, Lucia Iorio isn’t an international brand—yet—and the only place the GPS lingerie is available is at her Brazilian store. The website is not just all in Portuguese but also in Flash, which makes it a pain in the butt to run through online translation tools, and also makes it more difficult to find in search engines. So, cool site, bad Web marketing and search optimization. Nice job on getting the international press involved, though, even if poorly reported and over-hyped. From what I can gather, this is more of a local operation than a global feminist crisis one.
Still, they retail for between $800 and $1,100, prices based more on novelty than anything else. Iorio says she’s only sold a few, presumably to some deep-pocketed novelty underwear collectors—and at those prices who needs to sell a bunch?
Filing this one under “Mostly Hype,” but you’re bound to hear more about it as this catches wind. Here’s a YouTube video we found with the obligatory Brazilian model showing it off.
GPS Lingerie Resurrected In Brazil
