“Bring something that an Egyptian bride would have on her wedding night” read the instructions. Something tells me she has no idea what this means, but who am I to be a party pooper.

So, yesterday saw my first foray into the realms of Egyptian lingerie. I have of course, seen it from the street, but as it more resembles attire for a prostitute than a bride, I’ve done a pretty good job at steering clear.

A bit of a feathered g-string and crotchless panty virgin, I mustered my best do or die attitude and entered the shop. Divided in half, I stopped first at the half selling fabric and casually chose some cotton for a dress before crossing to the dark side (it really was dark). An unmarried (no ring) veiled girl in her late teens (definitely a virgin with no boyfriend - ever) smiled at me. I pointed to the most awful ensemble and asked if she had more like it. Luckily for me she had some catalogues.

Weddings are big business in this part of the world. Not only do bride and groom have to move into dwellings for the first time together, the dwellings have to be fully furnished and preferably fully paid for. Social etiquette determine who pays for what, but that’s for another blog.

As the bride becomes a “woman” purely due to the loss of her hymen (assuming it wasn’t sown up before, again, another blog) great emphasis is placed on the wedding night and sex. All teenage girls wait with trepidation for the day they can buy their trousseau of lacy lingerie.

Until now, I have managed to stay out of shops catering for this market, put off by the male assistants and the nylon feathered g-strings adorning the windows (the g-strings adorn the windows, not the male assistants). All that changed, however, because Mr S and I are going to his sister’s wedding in Montpelier on Friday and just received a letter from chief bridesmaid asking guests from abroad to bring something “traditional for the wedding night” from their country of residence.

I don’t think I’ve been so embarrassed since I was a young teenager. Imagine cheap prostitute meets polyester and nylon. The more modest designs were all bellydance costumes, just see through. Nylon arm bands, nylon/polyester net boob tubes, transparent lace and net skirts and dresses with slits to the crotch, straps and more straps in a sort of bondage-meets-bellydance style. I have nothing against belly dancing, in fact it is definitely an art form, but there was no getting away from the fact that what Egyptian woman want to wear to look sexy for their husbands is almost entirely based on what belly dancers wear.

Before I go on, I should perhaps put this in some context, which is not that I am an uptight-about-sex Brit. First of all, sex is not a taboo subject in Egypt, despite being a religiously conservative country, because Islam has a more liberal approach to it than Christianity. However, women here are increasingly veiled and society as a whole, is extremely conservative. Depending on what area of town you are in, looking too sexy can mean wearing baggy trousers. Add into this that most Egyptian women are extremely overweight and these outfits, all in one size only, become more mind boggling by the second.

So, after the “modest” belly dance-esque affairs, were outfits that had the shop assistant and I staring at each other in disbelief. I’m not sure what her disbelief was exactly, as she worked there and had obviously looked through the catalogues before, perhaps she was just worried about which one I would ask her to get. Anyway. As the taste moved down hill, the amount of flesh exposed increased. My tip top favourite was a pair of sheer polyester hotpants (in a variety of colours) that had an opening at the lower part of the buttocks. Without too much detail, anal sex is deeply prohibited by the main religion here, so I am not exactly sure what this opening was supposed to be suggesting, but they were very, very classy.

In fact, I didn’t understand what most of the ensembles were supposed to be suggesting other than “Hey hubby, lucky you, you just married a virgin and now you’ve got a whore into the bargain”.

I did try to find a website with some of these selections on, as I fear my description does not do them justice, but it seems these companies do not have websites. Instead, you’ll just have to make do with random samples I caught from shop windows in the past and trust me that these are modest examples.