The recession is providing unexpected areas of uplift: this week luxury lingerie retailer Agent Provocateur announced a rise in profits of 26 per cent. What is it about looming penury that makes people want to buy lacy knickers?

Lipstick famously does well in a recession: in the first half of last year L'Oréal showed a 5.3per cent jump in sales. The reasoning is that if a woman now has only £15 to spend rather than £115, she will spend it on a really good lipstick. It's an affordable rebellion against the new austerity.

But I'm not sure this surge in sexy knicker-buying is about women feeling better. I rather sneer at women who wear matching sets of underwear but if I felt like splashing out on a set for myself, I would go to Rigby and Peller, not Agent Provocateur.

Agent Provocateur's bestsellers include elaborate suspender sets, tight black basques and pink ribboned knickers with a gauzy heart-shaped panel at the back to show off the peachy wink of your meeting buttocks. It's simply not the sort of kit that women leave the house in.

And AP's new magazine advertising campaign makes it quite clear what they stand for. The ad shows a tiny-waisted woman with the biggest breasts I've ever seen in a fashion magazine, in a black bra, her arms up, covering most of her face.

Which makes me think that the leap in AP's profits isn't being driven by the same motivation as the lipstick sales. It's not about a ray of cheer in the gloom; it's about sex. And I don't mean that we're all staying in and doing it instead of going out and spending money we don't have.

No: instead, solvent men are like gold dust at the moment. Left to their own devices, women will wear sturdy, soft underwear that doesn't show under their clothes.

We only turn to the hard stuff when in a tight spot. Certainly, my one or two seriously racy sets of underwear, or my nurse's outfit, only come out of my knicker drawer when I want something, or I need to apologise.

Calculating women, looking for a way to hold on to their millionaire - or hoping to pinch someone else's - know they need to get their hands on some hot undies pronto.

And Agent Provocateur is laughing all the way to the bank.

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