Underwear on the up

A fashion show is held in Sanya to display Triumph's new styles.

Luxury travelers

Highlights of Shanghai Fashion Week F/W 2014

"Their products are comfortable and trendy and sell well. They claim their lingerie fits like a second skin, and it involves a lot of research and machinery to get the perfect silhouette and fit," says India's Sandhya Srinivasan, a former professor at Raffles Design Institute in Beijing who now designs bras for British brands like H&M and Marks & Spencer.

"Chinese women have a quite unusual body type. For example, there's usually a two-finger space between the breasts, but market research shows that for Chinese women it's just one and a half. Chinese also love heavy padding."

During the fashion show, Hong Kong singer-actress Karen Mok and mainland star Tang Yan spoke to the media as European, Brazilian and Chinese models showed off the company's bras, negligees and swimwear.

"I like all of Sloggi's products. But if I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be the X Nello series because it is so artistic," says Tang, whose pencil-thin physique and TV drama roles have made her popular among Chinese teenagers and women in their early 20s. "It suits young people and represents a freer kind of lifestyle."

Triumph has a history of pioneering breakthroughs. "We have a 400-strong team in Hong Kong whose daily job is to study changes to the Asian woman's body," says Lin.

It launched a deep-V series in 2007 to accentuate women's cleavage, a memory cushion in 2010 for greater comfort and a "new sexy" campaign in China three years ago to help women shed old stereotypes and focus on confidence-boosting lifestyle changes.