RackedWire: Britain's Corset Craze Has Already Hit Nolita; Left Bank Books Might Be Saved

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

NOLITA—Women in Britain are wearing underwear to the disco, according to a widely linked WWD article from this morning. This is all Rihanna's fault, naturally (although patron saint of no-pants Lady Gaga helped, of course.) After she showed up at the American Music Awards dressed like Milla Jovovitch in The Fifth Element, sales of corsets spiked, including two Bordelle numbers pictured in the WWD article and available at British department store Selfridge's. Here's the thing, though: Thanks to our recent afternoon spent skulking around Nolita sex shops, we happen to know that at least one of said corsets is available on Elizabeth Street right now. If you would like to jump headlong into the pantsless future, just pay a visit to Coco de Mer, where the Hervé Léger-like bandage corset is gussying up a mannequin as we speak. [WWD, subscription req'd]

WEST VILLAGE—Kim Herzinger of Left Bank Books is quickly becoming our favorite beleaguered retailer of the year. In a recent Villager piece about how his bookstore is being pushed out of the West Village by a rent-hungry landlord, he offered to let Marc Jacobs buy him out. Today, he talks to the New York Times about the day he found out he was being booted. "I was disappointed that they didn't at least offer me some price that I couldn't afford," says Herzinger, a retired English professor. But the story doesn't end there. Herzinger has found a space on 12th Street and Eighth Avenue, and although he hasn't signed any papers yet, it looks like he'll be able to move in. [NYT; Previously]