A shapewear enthusiast test-drives the new-gen smoothing styles

Now, as a size 12, deeply middle-aged woman who hasn’t seen her former size six or her recommended BMI range in 15 years (yes, I know BMI is an imperfect measurement! Don’t @ me!) I’m thrilled — truly — for the people who aren’t self-conscious about their lumps. I’m just not among them.

I’ve always felt more comfortable wearing shapewear under form-fitting clothes, and I’m not alone: Statista estimates that the shapewear market will be worth $3.8 billion USD by 2025.

That means these days, you’re not limited to an embarrassing corner of a dusty department store where you just grab something made of cheap fabric that rolls down and makes you feel like a sausage emerging from its casing — and only comes in sizes smaller than a 14 and skin tones lighter than a latte.

The category has exploded thanks, in part, to a curvy woman you’ve probably never heard of named Kim Kardashian. She launched Skims, her shapewear and lingerie line, in 2019, and according to Bloomberg it raked in almost $1B USD in 2023, about double what it made the year before.

The direct-to-consumer pipeline has noticed and jumped on the trend, with a rash of shapewear brands entering the market in the past few years. I don’t want to tell you how many viral video ads I’ve watched of influencers tucking their bellies into seemingly magic bodysuits, but it’s almost — almost! — more than the number of videos I’ve watched of foster dogs finding their furever homes.

Recently, the shapewear I’d been wearing for years was discontinued — they were by Body Wrap, an older gen of shapewear based on medical compressive garments, and like a true child of the ’90s, I’d lived in them for about 15 years. So I decide to test three newer contenders, from Skims, Honeylove and Knix, to find my new forever home.

The first to arrive is from Skims, available at Holt Renfrew. I’ve chosen the Seamless Sculpt Mid-Thigh Bodysuit ($124), which is a cute way of saying it’s a bodysuit with shorts that sucks and lifts from butt to boob with no underwire, and helps me avoid thigh chafing while it’s at it.

I ordered a large, but when I pick it up it’s the most hilariously teeny, tiny large thing I’ve ever seen, about the size of a Ziploc freezer bag and roughly the same weight. I’m convinced I’ll be able to get approximately one ankle in it, but boy does it stretch. It’s a bit of a tug to get it on, but once I do, it’s bizarrely comfortable. Like, I feel like I could nap in it — what is this witchcraft?! It holds my belly in without completely flattening me out, and I sail through several events and office days in it.

But, you ask, what about the peeing? This bodysuit has a demure gap in the fabric that you’re meant to hold open, so you don’t have to fully undress every time you go to the bathroom. Do I manage to do this perfectly every time? The answer is a slightly messy no, but it does get easier with practice.

The Skims is not at all sausage-y, and for my taste, it’s actually not sausage-y enough for the slinkiest of my slinky dresses. I want even more hold, and for that I turn to the Honeylove SuperPower Short ($150), a very high-waisted short. I pair it with the famed CrossOver bra ($120), which uses a bonded underbust for support instead of underwire. I barely notice I’m wearing it. But while the Skims is like a smoothing bodysuit, the Honeylove has flexible boning and more targeted compression.

While some people might find the Power Shorts too tight, I like it. When I put them on under a figure-hugging dress and sashay over to my husband, he tells me I look very *insert word I can’t print here*, so, win!

Like the Skims bodysuit, the shorts have what I now know is called an open “gusset” (shudder) for the washroom situation. I also try the Honeylove CrossOver Cami Bodysuit, which has a hook-and-latch closure at the crotch. This seems like a great idea until you find yourself stranded in a dimly lit public washroom unable to hook your undies back together, which definitely didn’t happen to me.

The final contestant is the Leakproof High Rise Shaper Brief from Knix, a very high-waisted, very strong shaping brief that also has leakproof technology. The Canadian brand started out making a period undies, but the feature also works for minor incontinence. I already own a few pairs of Knix panties for leaky days, which, let’s be real, I’ve had a kid, is all the days. I didn’t expect them to be able to bring such an intense shapewear game, too, and it’s a major bonus to have both things covered in one garment.

The briefs are so firm I actually feel like I’m getting some lower back support when I wear them, which isn’t something I was looking for in underwear, but I’m not mad at it.

So, let the more enlightened and confident women among us sally forth unrestricted — I’ll be sashaying around in my slinky dresses and my modern-day girdles feeling *insert word I can’t print here*, and loving every minute of it.

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