French store puts on striptease classes to boost lingerie sales

It isn't every day your progress to the seventh floor of a department store in the Christmas shopping season is blocked by security guards. Still less that you have to give your name to a man with a clipboard. But then Paris's Galeries Lafayette was staging no ordinary event yesterday: it was the venue for the world's first in-store striptease classes.

The checkpoint at the foot of the escalator was as far as interlopers got. The threat by feminists to disrupt the event never materialised. So it was left to the ticket-holders, mostly well-dressed young women, to progress upwards.

Surprisingly, in a city renowned as the world's capital of seduction, there had been no shortage of candidates who felt they needed help with these dark arts. By Friday all 400 places for the event were booked, company officials said.

The four half-hour classes given by two professional striptease artists took place behind closed doors. Vital tips given to would-be strippers included wearing high-heeled shoes and not wearing knee-high stockings (very unsexy). There were also instructions on how not to get your skirt tangled up in your shoes. Another rule of the game was to keep it brief - five minutes maximum.

"I'd never go to a strip club to take classes,'' said 27-year-old Brigitte de Abreu as she looked through the store's vast selection of thongs. "But in a big department store like this it seems fine.'' Learning the art "could always come in useful", she said.

Jeni Landers, a 29-year-old American who has lived in Paris for 18 months, said: "I consider myself a serious feminist and I think part of being a woman is to be proud of my body. There was nothing vulgar about this; it was just like going to a dance class.''

After a disastrous summer season when the scorching heatwave kept customers away, Galeries Lafayette is hoping the initiative will boost sales by attracting clients to the opening of what it claims is the biggest lingerie department in the world - 2,800 metres of floor space devoted to more than 3,000 styles.