Something's sizzling in the kitchen

Flirty and fun, today's aprons are hot items for new reasons

By Chris Zdeb, Edmonton Journal

Something's heating up the kitchen and it isn't the oven. The apron is so hot these days, it may well be doing double duty in the bedroom.
"I wouldn't be surprised," laughs Gloria Lockie, "particularly the black-and-white print one we had, with black pleats on the bottom and black ties. That might have gone for . something else."
Neither of the outlets of Call The Kettle Black (callthekettleblack.com) that Lockie manages in Edmonton can keep aprons in stock. Women buy them for themselves or as gifts. Men buy them for their women.
"They say their wives need a nice little apron. I don't ask any questions; I just sell it," Lockie chuckles.
Most aprons are as functional at keeping clothes clean from cooking spatters as they were in granny's day. They disappeared from the kitchen for a while around the time the feminist movement surfaced in the late 1960s.
But now aprons are also feminine, flirtatious and fun, since it became popular about five years ago for modern women to tie one on again.
Aprons are kitchen haute couture that say "cooking is fun, cooking is fashionable," Lockie says. "I think we're getting more romantic (and nostalgic) about a lot of stuff," (including aprons).
Cory Hrushka, a registered psychologist/ sex therapist, says the return of the apron is a sign "women are re-embracing the power of their femininity, which a lot of people have disregarded in the past because they view (femininity) as weak, where really, it's more powerful than masculinity, relationally.
"When we look at the rules in bars and in the bedroom, really, women are the ones that have the power; they are the gatekeepers." he says. "A lot of women are coming back and going, 'Oh, I can actually do both. I can be strong in my femininity, which will attract men.' "
The apron fulfils both sides of the coin, Hrushka explains. The front reminds us of home and caring, intimacy, nurturing and warmth. The open back is all about sex.
Heather Hansen has been making money from the sexy power of aprons since she cofounded Flirty Aprons (flirtyaprons.com) almost four years ago with partner Jamie Taylor and their husbands. The company boasts that their clothes-covers "make you look delicious."
"Over the years, the apron has been seen as the ball and chain, or the domestication of women, and we wanted to make an apron that would suit the modern woman - someone who loves style and fashion, but also loves to expand her talents through cooking or painting," Hansen says on the phone from her home in Provo, Utah.
The flattering cut of their aprons accentuate the waistline creating an hourglass shape that makes the wearer feel womanly, but also beautiful and confident and sexy - empowered - instead of frumpy, while she's doing tasks that some consider drudgery, she says.
"They're not meant to put a woman in her place, like she's supposed to be in the kitchen. . They're meant to bring some pizzazz and sassiness to her day."
Does she wear an apron in the bedroom? "No comment!" laughs the 27-year-old former runway model and mother of one, who is expecting twins in February.

But many of the women who have bought or received her sexy tie-ins do.
"We get e-mails from customers saying they love to wear (their apron) by itself for their husbands or their significant others, that it doubles as a second wardrobe in the bedroom."
They weren't intended for that use, but Hansen suspected they would be used that way.
"It's every man's dream, I think, to come home to his wife wearing nothing but an apron and cooking a meal for him."
The best selling Flirty Apron is the Sassy Black, which features a black and white floral print and a decorative bow that ties in front. Others include the new Marilyn line, named after '50s movie star Marilyn Monroe, and the Little Black Dress that has a faux string of pearls hanging over the bib.
The sexiness of the apron is nothing new.
"When you go back into all the old pin-up pictures, back in the olden days (the 1940s and 1950s), you find a lot of pin-up girls wearing aprons and holding feather dusters," says professional photographer Tammy Deren of Smiley Eyes Photography in Spruce Grove (smileyeyesphotography.com). She's taken several boudoir and pin-up shots of local women in aprons, usually worn over some kind of lingerie.
"Add an apron to a woman in fishnets and high heels and nothing much else on, and that's pretty hot," Deren says. "It's kind of a secret, naughty thing, kind of like forbidden, but not really."
Household or domestic wear, whether it's a maid's outfit or kitchen outfit, are popular getups for role playing, confirms James Priel, owner of The Passion Vault, "Edmonton's Classiest Adult Store."
"The butt is exposed, that's the draw. It's something you can't see from the front but there's something back there that you want."
They're especially popular with newlyweds and for Valentine's Day.
Aprons, with or without anything else on, look good and can add to the fun in a relationship, Priel says. "It's like vacuuming with very little on; you're engaged in fantasy, which increases the pleasure of couples together ... because sex can get awful boring in a hurry, especially if you've been together many years.
"Sometimes it becomes a job and that's just because of the normalcy of it, and not engaging in conversation is what it is," explains Priel, 55, who will have been married 30 years in November.
As sexy as aprons and domestic outfits are, the most popular role-playing costume is the nurse's uniform. "Nurses see so much and they're supposed to know so much," Priel says.
"It's the caretaker role, but assertive," Hrushka says.
"A lot of men, when they come home, traditionally, want to be taken care of," he explains, and that puts women in a position of power, whether they're wearing an apron, or not.
czdeb@edmontonjournal.com