Ruth Lorenzo – X Factor

X Factor’s Ruth Lorenzo says : ‘That Simon Cowell made me feel beautiful’ and how much do you think he fancied her?

Sexy slady Ruth Lorenzo, here in a shoot for last week for Closer magazine, she looks hot and very shapely and toned.  She said that Simon Cowell helped her with her low self esteem.  The onscreen flirting was apparent and week after week he said comments about her voluptuous figure very, very positively.

Ruth Lorenzo says her self esteem has grown since appearing on the X Factor… and she puts it all down to Simon Cowell.   The ex-contestant has admitted that her on-screen flirts with the show’s officiando helped her feel good about her looks. She also told Closer magazine: ‘I was so flattered that he thought I was beautiful.  Let’s face it he fancied the very knickers off her!

So what could Ruth wear under such a dress?

Plie Control Tube

Pulled in and toned Plie Control Tube

‘I’ve always thought I was fat and been very self-conscious about my appearance. I’m from Spain where everyone is beautiful, so I never thought I was attractive.  ‘For Simon to say those things, it’s given me a real boost. I feel a lot better about myself now.’  Ruth, 26, even dropped a dress size during the competition, going from a size 14 to a size 12.  And you can tell.

She laughs: ‘I call it the X Factor diet, all I did was rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. My clothes are baggy on me now, it’s great!’  She says the best thing about the X Factor, other than progressing her singing career, has been meeting fellow contestant Alexandra Burke, 20.   Now Alexandra has won and the show has finished for this year, the girls are planning to move in together and get a dog and a cat – and as asked last night will they call them Holly and Dermot or maybe Cheryl and Simon!

‘She’s like my little sister now, I know that she’s a best friend for life,’ she says.  She said before last night that “I’m rooting for her to win. She has to win. She’s the best singer I’ve ever heard, much better than Mariah Carey.’  And gues what she diod – singing with Beyonce!

On stage: Ruth’s performances on X Factor earned her a place in the judges’ hearts

Read the full story in Closer magazine – if you have not already bought it best book an appointment at the hairdressers and read their copy

She also counts her mentor Dannii Minogue as a firm friend. ‘Dannii was the most amazing mentor. She looked after me so well,’ she says.  Ruth also says that Dannii’s new man Kris Smith, is fantastic. ‘He’s such a wonderful man and they’re so in love – I could just tell by the way they’d look at each other, there was so much love in their eyes,’ she says.   ‘After I voted out we were all in Dannii’s dressing room crying. ‘He’s so gentle.’

Last night, the Spaniard stepped out in a high street copy of the latest fashion must-have – a Herve Leger bandage dress.   She wore a £54 blue one-shouldered dress from Lipsy – much more affordable than the Herve Leger dresses, which range in price from £773 to £2,234.  Cheryl Cole and other top celebrities love them.

Ruth enjoyed at night out at a celebrity party in London last night

Sexy Underwear

HELLO BOYS! … and goodbye to those humiliating Bridget Jones big knickers. The latest support underwear will for a va va voom an hourglass figure – and STILL look sexy in the bedroom

Recently in the Daily Mail a reported wrote about the change of big knickers, which we all own a pair of at least one or maybe two.  Moving away from the big knickers and towards looking and feeling sexy beacuse after all all us women deserve that!

She wrote that these hardworking garments hanging from the rails in lingerie boutique Femme Fatale, although you would not know it to look at them.   ‘That is perfect to wear under a little black dress,’ says boutique owner Julie McDonald, pointing at an elegant lace bustier in a silvery grey by Belgian label Prima Donna.  ‘It pulls in your tummy, enhances your cleavage and gives a smooth silhouette. We’re also selling out of waist cinchers and corsets and I’m not surprised.

THE FIGURE ENHANCER: Ivory with lace detail corset, £114.95, thong, £31.95, Marie-Jo at Femme Fatale, 01622 851 444, hold-ups, £9, Femme Fatale, as before

‘We all know control knickers work and  but let’s face it: they are not pretty to look at.  ‘Many of Femme Fatale clients are increasingly demanding underwear that will shape them and look sexy at the same time.’ Women everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief. It’s time to pack away those embarrassing Bridget Jones ‘hello mummy’ pants and get intimately acquainted with a new breed of undergarments  –  shape wear which can also be date wear.

‘Despite the seamless magic knicker phenomenon, customers are investing in more traditional shapewear which resembles the underwear of the Fifties,’ says Denise Fraser, lingerie buyer at figleaves.com.  ‘And it’s no longer just for special occasions. Shapewear is an all-year-round purchase.’ At Femme Fatale, a chain of lingerie shops in Kent, women are booking in for body styling sessions with Julie McDonald, who has been trained by lingerie label Prima Donna to sculpt waists, flatten tummies and lift busts without the need of a scalpel. So good is her eye, she can make any woman appear 10lb lighter at a stroke simply by choosing the right bra.

‘It’s worth going back to basics,’ she says. ‘Women don’t just wear the wrong bra size, they wear the wrong style for their shape. If you get it right, it can instantly create a waist and slim down hips.’ ‘The possibilities are infinite,’ agrees fashion consultant Christa Von Vooren who oversees the lingerie styling training for Prima Donna and its sister label Marie Jo.   ‘Women are learning to work with what they have and not go straight to a cosmetic surgeon and say “Can you change this or remake that”.’

POSTURE CORRECTOR : Black lace and gold satin bra, £16m Autograph at Mars & Spencer, 0845 302 1234. Black Esbelt, £39, Brazilian Shapewear, 01743 466 566. Black briefs, £21.48, Miraclesuit at Rigby and Peller, www.rigbyandpeller.com

INVISIBLE UNDERWEAR : Pink sheer bra, £40, knickers, £20, Bodas, http://www.bodas.co.uk Silk dressing gown, £169, Fenwick, 020 7629 9161. Mules, £95, Agent Provocateur, 0870 6000 229

TV presenter Gok Wan – we kneel before him – also extols the virtues of good, old-fashioned lingerie on his makeover shows. Indeed, he has his own range of shapewear with names such as Boobilicious Basque, Sex Kitten Corset and Wonder Waspie, which positively revel in curves.   And the man’s got a point given that the average bra size is a C cup and a quarter of all bras sold at Marks & Spencer alone are a D cup and above. ‘There is not much available for curvy girls when it comes to underwear, but I also know there are slimmer girls who want to embrace and enhance their curves, too,’ says Wan.  ‘I hate to say it, but women’s lib in the Seventies led to us losing the art of dressing up our bodies,’ says Katie Halford, who runs lingerie label What Katie Did, which specialises in Fifties- style garments in modern fabrics.

‘We had too many years of dressing down. Celebrities were still using every trick in the book to look amazing on the red carpet while we were all left hating our figures.  ‘Now, thank goodness, the golden age of glamour has returned for everyone and it is a far more achievable look for all body shapes.  ‘People may say that wearing a girdle is unnatural, but it’s more unnatural to have liposuction or a breast enlargement.’

Katie got interested in shape wear as a teenager. ‘My first job was in a fetish shop because back then that was the only place you could buy a corset. Now, shape wear is mainstream again, which is brilliant.  ‘Our two best- sellers are the glamour waist cincher and the corselette, which is a bra top with a girdle attached that holds everything in.

HIP SMOOTHER (left): Corset, £55, Gok Wan at Simply Yours, http://www.simplyyours.co.uk Silk dressing gown, £169, Fenwick, as before. Ivory hold-ups, £9, Femme Fatale, 01622 851 444. Satin heels with jewel detail, £625, Gina, 020 7409 7090

CURVE ENHANCER (right): Black silk with cream lace corset, £89, and knickers, £26, Pleasure State at Selfridges, 0800 123 400. Black Lycra hold-ups, £7.34, Levante, 222.mytights.com

‘Most of us can’t afford a dress like that, but shapewear can give the same effect. It will make even a cheap dress from Primark look expensive. It reduces your waist by up to two inches. It’s also comfortable and sexy.’   Other labels are also discovering that their more traditional lines are enjoying a revival, such as the Charnos hourglass corselette, which is very Mrs Robinson.

Slips are back in our wardrobes, too, in various guises, be they underwired or ultra-controlling, such as the Spanx Hide and Sleek (take a look at leialingerie.com).

But the real experts at this are the Brazilians. Yes, women from the land of the body beautiful have secretly been wearing ultra-sophisticated control underwear for the best part of a decade.  Read my other article about Brazilliand and wearing Yellow!  ‘Brazilian women are far more demanding of their lingerie,’ says John Pearce, who set up Brazilian Shapewear with his South American wife Ellie de Souza to import the leading brands into the UK.  ‘They want something that really works to accentuate their figures, but is not going to embarrass them in the bedroom.

One oF the best-sellers is the Plie bandeau slimming tube, a seam-free slip. When we sent it to a Brazilian TV presenter, she wore it as a dress and the hourglass effect was amazing.’

But the piece de resistance is the Esbelt: a cinching latex and cotton corset that is even claimed to reduce your waist measurement permanently if you wear it long enough.  10 hours if you can stand it!

This slightly fetishistic looking garment has proved a huge hit in the U.S., where it is known as the Squeem and sells 60,000 a month. And the word is spreading here.  ‘This is the kind of secret women like to share with their friends,’ says John.  ‘As soon as a woman puts it on, she gets instant curves. Her breasts are lifted,  she appears taller as it corrects poor posture and it’s also comfortable to wear. ‘It has been claimed that if this is worn for eight to ten hours a day, there will be a permanent loss of inches around the waist because the latex promotes a micro massage of the muscles as well as long-term benefits to posture and digestion.’ Brazilian Shapewear and the European distributors are carrying out clinical trials in Portugal to substantiate these claims.

In the meantime, the Esbelt is selling like hot cakes, so don’t let the faint whiff of rubber put you off.

The vest corset is the most comfortable of the two styles available over here. It has a milkmaid charm when worn with a bra. Once you have shoe-horned yourself in, the effect is dramatic.  Not only does it give you an instant hourglass shape, it holds you in a poker straight position which would take years to achieve in a Pilates class. Though it feels tight at first, it is far more comfortable than a rival product, which is more like a stretchy tube.  ‘The key is to find the right undergarments for you and your figure,’ says Julie McDonald, a petite 50-year-old who has some pretty impressive curves of her own thanks to her favourite Prima Donna bustier.

‘It depends what clothes you are wearing and also what job you do. If you are a teacher, you don’t want something that accentuates your breasts. If you sit at a desk all day, you won’t want underwear that is too rigid.  ‘It’s just great that women are starting to understand how to work with their body shapes. It’s not all about compressing and flattening what you’ve got because that can make you look like a blob.

‘What women want these days is curves and that is what I can give them.’

• To find out about Prima Donna or Marie Jo lingerie styling sessions in your area, go to http://www.primadonna.eu or http://www.femmefatale-uk.com

Other sites where you will find Prima Donna underwear

Bare Neccesities

Affair Lingerie

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