Agent Provocateur

Undercover Investigator

Joseph Corré and Serena Rees, purveyors of the world's finest lingerie, fire-balled Agent Provocateur onto the radar in 1994 as combiners of glamour, fit and wit, they made us all realise that sexy underwear needn't squeak or rustle. I caught up with the pair to reflect on their stratospheric success.

When you first launched in 1994 in Broadwick Street Soho did people get it?

J: No one at that point had any real thought of lingerie meeting fashion. There was nothing exciting out there at all. The market was dominated by black, white, flesh tones and a bit of red at Christmas.

S: When we began Agent Provocateur we wanted to create this beautiful place that only existed in our imagination. We had always hoped something similar existed somewhere else, but it didn't. Once we had realised our dreams and opened our first store in Soho, we found that in actual fact there were many people out there who felt exactly the same way as us.

How does Agent Provocateur stand alone?

J: We have tried to make the environment reflect the product. We wanted to combine intimacy, fashion, comfort and sense of humour. Wearing sexy exciting underwear gives you a different attitude. When we opened, I think people realised what they had been missing. For us it's like inviting someone into our house. Everything is incredibly personal for us. The brand isn't bigger than us, which is why we have got such a clear identity and that is what sets us apart. Our philosophy is that we won't sell anything in our stores unless both Serena and I personally like it.

S: Our aim is to find the right lingerie for every customer and every occasion, we wouldn't dream of allowing a customer to leave the store with a bra that didn't fit them properly. Our staff are brilliant and are trained to attend to the customers every need.

Why do you think Agent Provocateur has been able to live up to its name?

S: We are not afraid to take risks. We don't have to answer to anybody else. If we want to do something we simply do it. We don't care what anyone else thinks and we are fiercely passionate about what we do. Every part of the business, whether it's designing the lingerie or the interiors of the stores, the whole experience comes from the two of us. Other people set up businesses, work in a formulaic way and pigeonhole everything. Some of the smartest things that we did came about from having no money initially. We had to be clever and think on our feet. We wanted to tell people that we existed in a fun way. We didn't want to be mundane and ram things down peoples' throats but rather to let people discover us a bit for themselves. Our clientele are all intelligent people. Our stores aren't usually located on the main drag. They are always just off the radar because of the nature of the product itself.

I like the idea of stories starting with buying the product. Stories seem to be a theme in the way you've chosen to market yourselves throughout the years.

S: I think our first real marketing activity was to produce our annual catalogues. By this point people from all over the world were asking where they could buy our lingerie, and they wanted somewhere they could see the collections as a whole. We thought about what we loved visually and began producing our exciting and collectable annual catalogues. We made oversized playing cards illustrated with classic pin up girls, limited edition strip poker sets, pop up shops and a hard back book called "A Sporting Life". We played with ideas that we both personally liked and we wanted to produce something that people could keep, to have and to hold. We once did a flyposter campaign called "Lessons in Etiquette" which had people in a frenzy, trying to tear them down off the walls!

What led you to work with Mike Figgis and Miss X (played by Kate Moss) in this current campaign?

J: What's great about Mike is that he works in such an intimate way. It cuts out the middleman and so there is less chance of a commercial edge. Things get dumped if you involve too many people and also they can get homogenised.

S: We'd worked on a few short cinema ad/commercials that I suppose progressed to the hugely successful Kylie campaign in 2002. It was the first and most important online viral campaign of its time and It's still winning awards now.... We knew the director Mike Figgis, so we got together and chatted about the possibility of working together, which is how the short film "Tied up at the Office" came about. It was initially an experimental project to see how we worked together, an intimate and sexy little movie; just Mike and the girls shooting in the dark. The result was great and we were all so pleased that it led to this latest series of four short films "The Four Dreams of Miss X". The theme of dreams developed and then Mike, Kate and the two of us sat together and had a creative throw about.

Was Kate a distinctive voice in the process?

S: Yes, it was a very personal process and Kate contributed heavily. Miss X is the best campaign we've ever done. When you're living it day to day you don't have time to acknowledge what you are doing, but this project has really made us step back and go wow, look what we've achieved!

How does the second film differ from the first?

J: Shadows really sets the scene, there is lots of narrative whereas the second film is much shorter and visual with more artistic references. Shadows is an intensely intimate experience with Miss X whereas Scale is very surreal. Everything in the film seems too big or too small. Miss X enters the strange and surreal world of Room 56 where distortion is rife. Very Cocteau-esque, very beautiful, very sexy. But I think the third is probably the sexiest one of all because Miss X becomes an exhibitionist. Then we end with the fourth next year that is about narcissism. Very introspective. It's about her relationship with herself.

S: What's great as well is that anyone in the world in any far flung place can see what Kate Moss is wearing and buy it online. That's amazing.

What motivates you now?

J: Building something and seeing that process shift and grow. Also just working as an independent company in this day and age motivates me. We are told we are given more and more choice today but its all a choice of the same thing. I like the anarchic sense of offering an alternative. Showing people that there is a different path and making people talk and think about things differently. Like our 'weapons of mass distraction' campaign during the Iraq war.

And "the only bush I trust is my own" knickers...

J: Yeah, we also like to retain a sense of humour. I don't think Agent Provocateur is some holy church of a brand and I don't think I'm the chicest person in the world. It's about just trying to retain your humanity.

So why be political?

J: No one is interested in the political process anymore, it is all such rubbish. Who do you even want to vote for? So how do people get their views across? It is all about where you or I choose to spend our money. I want to spend my money with places/people/brands that I relate to or like and that's political. Lots of brands don't want to risk, don't want to speak about what's going on but you know our shop displays aren't always just about selling knickers. If you don't like it then you don't have to come in. I don't want to always sanitize or worry about offending people. I like to think we've picked the world up, given it a good tickle and turned it around a bit. That's what we always wanted.