M&S launches £28 hip-padding bodysuit to create curvier silhouette

Charlotte Davies, M&S’s director of lingerie, said the idea came from customers seeking “solutions that offer subtle enhancement alongside everyday comfort and confidence,” a trend driven by catwalks and celebrities. The retailer previously sold padded bum shorts and stick-on nipples for a “realistic raised profile beneath clothing.”

Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand, Skims, launched hip-padded shorts last year. Many online users say such padding can help minimise “hip dips,” the natural inward curves between the hipbone and thighbone. The emergence of enhancing shapewear coincides with growing scrutiny over body images, influenced by widespread GLP-1 drug use and a rise in cosmetic procedures.

On recent runways, designers have played with reconstruction. Schiaparelli’s creative director, Daniel Roseberry, used visible and invisible padding to inflate hips and whittle waists. Dior and Alaïa drew on 17th- and 18th-century panniers, rigid side hoops, for dresses with exaggerated hips. At the Met Gala in May, Kim Kardashian emphasised her shape with a fibreglass breast plate, while her sisters Kylie and Kendall Jenner wore moulded corsets with fake nipples and amplified hips.

Victoria Pitts-Taylor, a Wesleyan University professor and author of “Surgery Junkies,” said weight-loss medications change many bodies but “don’t automatically deliver conventional, ideal beauty,” which often requires sculpting through fabric or surgery. Psychotherapist Susie Orbach described the trend as “grotesque,” saying it puts women in a position where they constantly have to create a body. Heritage specialist Ali Bodley, curator of the “Shaping The Body” exhibition, noted that long before Skims, there were “bum shops” specialising in padding.