"Cougar effect" boosts UK lingerie sales

Lingerie is displayed in the new Playboy store in central London September 19, 2007.

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Sales of sultry lingerie among older women are booming in Britain thanks to the glamorous 40-somethings of "Sex and the City 2" and "Cougar Town," retail chain Debenhams reported Thursday.

The hit TV show, and forthcoming movie, featuring the bedroom antics of women in their 40s and 50s and their much younger partners, is being credited with a rise in demand for lingerie from women of the same age, Debenhams said.

The department store said a nationwide analysis of the most popular lingerie styles from October 2009 to April 2010, revealed that women over 40 have given the more seductive side of the lingerie industry a big boost.

"Positive female role models in this age group such as the women in the Sex and the City movies and Courteney Cox in TV's Cougar Town are giving the women confidence to splash out on themselves," Debenhams head lingerie buyer Annette Warburton said in a statement.

Women over 40 were rediscovering their figures, often after having children or getting divorced.

Previously, the store said, the main purchasers of cleavage-enhancing bras, basques, thongs, stockings and suspenders, have been women in their early 20s.

"With women's 40s being touted as the new 20s, and lingerie designers stepping up to the mark to feed this demand, it's a market we expect to see grow further in the future," Warburton said.

(Reporting by Paul Casciato; Editing by Steve Addison)