Undie cover secrets

AGENT Provocateur was launched in 1994 by Serena Rees and husband Joseph Corre - son of designer Vivienne Westwood and one-time Sex Pistols boss Malcolm McClaren.

The first store in Soho was an instant hit as celebs and the public alike discovered a taste for naughty lingerie. More British shops opened before Agent went international with a Los Angeles branch in 2000 and a New York store last year.

Celebrity customers - and these are just the ones who've been spotted sneaking in - include David Beckham, who lashed out pounds 1,000 on his 'n' hers jewel-encrusted whips, plus a skimpy white bra and matching knickers for Posh.

Claudia Schiffer hid behind dark glasses for her visit as she popped in for sexy items before she wed film producer Matthew Vaughn in 2002.

After Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling married Dr Neil Murray in 2001, she walked out of a London branch with two bags of goodies.

And one naughty partygoer gave supermodel Kate Moss a diamond- encrusted Agent Provocateur whip for her 30th birthday in January.

AGENT Provocateur is the upmarket underwear chain where the likes of David Beckham go to buy saucy little numbers for their loved ones. It's 10 years old this month and now so well-known that Kate Winslet plays an Agent Provocateur agent - yes, they call their shop assistants agents - in the new film Romance And Cigarettes. To find out what Kate's real-life counterparts get up to, we sent actress LYDIA PIECHOWIAK, 25, to work undie-cover at the chain's Soho store. Here's her fascinating diary...

AT Agent Provocateur you never know who is going to walk in. On my very first day, I was kneeling down arranging a rack of quarter-cup and half-cup bras when a customer nearly fell over me.

I was sent down to the stock room in disgrace, when above me I suddenly heard loud shrieks of delight and a cry of "Oooh, they look fabulous."

I went back upstairs to discover that the attractive middle-aged lady who had nearly collided with my bum was rock legend Debbie Harry.

She'd been buying a pair of sexy wrist cuffs studded with diamante. Working there, you soon learned not to be shocked or surprised by anything.

One day three women dressed in burkas came in - you know, those head-to-toe garments that the Taliban forced women to wear in Afghanistan. It occurred to me that they might be about to stage a protest, but it turned out to be anything but.

They proceeded to buy the sexiest, scantiest underwear imaginable...tiny bras, thongs, French knickers, you name it.

It gave me great pleasure to know that underneath these long repressive garments these women were actually wearing deliciously saucy knickers. I'll never be able to look at a newsreel from Afghanistan in the same way again.

We do actually have a proper protester who comes in now and again. Everyone knows her as the "mad nun". She's a proper nun, presumably, she certainly looks like one. She comes in, starts shouting about sex, sin and depravity and goes away again. There's never a dull moment at Agent Provocateur.

During one afternoon lull one of the girls brought out one of our notorious whips with diamante-encrusted handle and proceeded to chase the other girls in and out of the dressing rooms, threatening to spank their bottoms. I have to admit that I couldn't resist joining in... and I have the marks to prove it. Goodness knows what the mad nun would have thought if she had walked in at that moment. New staff like me are encouraged to get to know the stock by trying it on. In my session, I was given an armful of sexy numbers and changed into each one in turn while my colleagues reclined on red velvet sofas and watched me model them. Any man who had blundered in by mistake would have thought he had died and gone to heaven.

If a man is unsure about his lady's size, the girls will sometimes model items. I put on a lovely black lace negligee for one man who came in for an anniversary present for his wife.

He was in his forties, I suppose, quite attractive and very sweet. By the time I had finished my "show" beads of sweat were pouring down his face. But he bought the negligee and went away happy. The thing about Agent Provocateur is that even the uniforms are sexy. They're pink and figure-hugging and worn with high heels and make-up. At my job interview I was asked how I felt about that. I told them that at 5ft 4in I'm far happier in heels, and that I never leave the house without piling on a ton of slap anyway. My reply seemed to meet with approval...

The other girls left the top button of their uniform undone, but I felt a little shy at first.

Although I kept sneakily undoing it while feeling brave, whenever a man walked into the shop I suddenly came over all prudish and had to do it up again. Finally, due to all the doing-up and undoing, the button popped off, so that solved that problem.

Mentally I divided men shoppers into two types - Suit Man and Jeans Man. They had completely different approaches. Suit Man would come in, rattle off his lady's size, say I want this, this, and this and would be out again in less than five minutes. They might as well have been buying tins of baked beans. At the beginning I thought they were super-confident, although as time went on I changed my opinion. I think the truth is that they were really nervous and used all that bluster to disguise it.

Jeans Man got a better deal. He'd be laid-back and calm, talk to the girls about the styles and go away with something that both he and his lady would like. But the calmest man by far was a guy the girls all knew, who would drop in regularly for a chat. He had loads of mistresses and would buy sexy underwear for them all.

All the myths about underwear buying are stood on their heads at Agent Provocateur. For instance, that one about the bloke buying all that black lace bras, suspenders, stockings and the woman coming back a day later to change it all... well, that doesn't seem to happen at Agent Provocateur. If anything the reverse is true.

One couple came back because the set the man had bought hadn't been raunchy enough. The lady decided she wanted crotchless knickers - except at AP we don't call them that. We call them "Ouvertes"... the French for "open".

Selling underwear, you get to hear some marvellous stories. One woman came in to buy some stuff for a man friend of hers who was about to go in for a sex-change op. She wanted to give him his first bra. It was a nice one too, in jade green.

A sex slave rang up wanting to make an appointment to buy dozens of gifts for his mistress. All the girls got the giggles and we decided we were in the wrong line of work.

We couldn't wait to meet him, but he rang again to say he and his mistress were rather tied up and wouldn't be able to make it in that afternoon!

The whole image of Agent Provocateur has been carefully crafted to be stylish as well as sexy. The shops look like 18th Century French boudoirs and the girls are like goddesses.

The one who interviewed me was only 23, but she was 6ft and stunning with it. The goods are not cheap, but they are beautiful. I was selling corsets at pounds 145 and knickers at pounds 55. You can also get the tiniest of thongs called Dixie Strings in matchbox- sized boxes. I can't remember how much they cost, but weight for weight they must have been more expensive than gold. As a worker, I got a 10 per cent discount, but the only things I bought were two pairs of stockings. I earned around pounds 7 an hour, plus extra bonuses if you sold items that were on offer that particular week. But the things I learned about people were priceless.

I was sorry to go in a way, but life moves on, and so all I can say is... this is secret agent Lydia signing off.

features@sunday mirror.co.ukFROM SEX PISTOLS TO SEXPOTS

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