SYDNEY (AFP) – An Australian man dressed only in his underpants survived a fall from his ninth-storey apartment when an apparent incident of high jinks went badly wrong, police said Tuesday.

The 35-year-old was attempting to build planks across to a neighbour’s flat when he lost his footing and plummeted 30 metres (100 feet) to the ground, police said.

The man crashed through an iron and timber pergola which broke his fall.

“He was skylarking around, building planks across to his neighbour’s place when it happened,” police spokesperson Ros Weatherall said. “He was very lucky.”

Residents at the apartment complex in the western Australian capital Perth said they heard a strange noise shortly after midnight.

One said he woke to find police tending to the scantily-clad man in the apartment’s courtyard.

“He was conscious, he was going ‘Well, well, where am I? What happened?’ and that was about it,” the resident told ABC radio.

“It was a horrendous fall because he actually came down nine storeys.”

The man was taken to hospital where he is in a stable condition with cuts and a suspected broken leg.

West Australian police Inspector John Gibson said he had first thought the man would have been “a goner”.

“But, yeah he survived and jolly good luck to him,” he told ABC radio.

“One would hope that if he was skylarking, he’s learnt a very big lesson from a very lucky fall.”

PARIS (AFP) – After skirts, make-up and pantyhose for men, the corset, onetime symbol of women’s oppression, might be the next big thing for fashion-conscious males.

Young Parisian corset maker Sylvain Nuffer began cutting, stitching and boning corsets for men four years ago and now sells 30-odd standard models a year at 500 to 600 euros (650 to 775 dollars) a shot, 40 percent more when made to measure.

“I felt frustrated by the lack of choice of clothing for men,” he told AFP. “I made one for myself and they kind of multiplied.”

Wearing jeans with a gray silk corset of his own making over a shirt and tie, Nuffer, who learnt the complex trade with his corsetiere mother, stands tall, waist nipped in, shoulders wide, back straight.

Corsets for men have a history, he said, worn by medieval horsemen to protect the spine, adopted by bikers today for the same reason.

But the real inspiration behind Nuffer’s corset — laced up the back with a clip-open busk at the front — dates back to the heady days of the 1789 French Revolution.

Male followers of utopian philosopher and economist, Count Claude Henri de Saint-Simon, at the time adopted the corset precisely because it was impossible to lace up alone. Having to help each other with the ties symbolised the humanitarian helping-other ideals of the Saint-Simonien movement.

Critics derided Nuffer’s early creations, however, saying a garment stiffened with a multitude of bones and stays would be uncomfortable.

Not so, said one adept, Laurent Renaud, who teaches at a fashion school and wears his everyday. “I wear it over a shirt or under a sweater,” he said. “I use it as daywear or to go out at night.”

“The problem,” he added, “is you get so used to it keeping you straight that it gets difficult to go without.”

Hubert Barrere, the designer who created the corset for Madonna’s wedding dress in 2000, said in interview that “corsets for men are a bit like upgraded waistcoats.”

Military dress uniforms continued to be ribbed in the 20th century, said Barrere, a master corset maker who works with likes of Dolce and Gabbana and Stella McCartney while turning out made-to-measure personal numbers for Madonna, Kylie Minogue and Isabelle Adjani.

“I’m not over-enthused about corsets for men,” he added. “I prefer a woman’s body, I feel better highlighting a woman’s curves.”

Pulling from a box a gold python corset made for Alexander McQueen and worn by Naomi Campbell, Barrere waxes lyrical on what a corset can do for a woman.

“A woman who wears a corset offers herself to men differently, she is attractive,” he said. “Corsets constrain the body, either to protect or to display, and the richer and more powerful you are, the readier you are to wear clothing that constrains.”

Barrere, whose bespoke corsets cost over 2,000 euros a piece, uses spring or spiral steel rather than plastic to “change a silhouette, highlight feminine shapes, modify volumes.”

“I want corsets to be comfortable, delirious but comfortable.”

Whether as underwear or outerwear, the corset has seen difficult times.

Worn to gird and shape the torso, 16th-century models were so stiff women could not sit down. At mealtimes, wearers had to remove the wooden busk, or shaft, inserted at the front and lay it at the table by the cutlery. It was a breach of etiquette for a man to handle the busk.

In the 19th century, when waists were supposed to be no bigger than twice the circumference of the neck, there was an outcry over the harm of tight lacing to health and corsets fell out of favour as an instrument of women’s oppression.

They were gradually replaced, as underwear, by girdles and elastic bras while the corset, worn outside the clothing, was marginalised as an accounterment in the dusky subcultures of bondage, domination, sadism and masochism.

In the 1970s the garment came out of the closet, staging a comeback on the catwalks in a collection by Britain’s Vivienne Westwood inspired by historical garments.

She was followed a decade later by Thierry Mugler and Jean-Paul Gaultier, the designer who created Madonna’s famed pointy corset bra for her 1990 World Tour and then turned the shape into an iconic perfume bottle.

For Barrere, the corset story has come full circle.

“Corsets were long a wound for women,” he said. “But today if a woman decides to wear a corset it is a sign of empowerment, not of submission.”

DIJON, France (AFP) – One of France’s leading hosiery makers is launching a new line for men next month — pantyhose with a welcome front opening and big feet, available in thick mannish knit but also as sheer tights.

Gerbe, which is based in eastern France, said this week that the country’s first hosiery line for men would go on sale in March “due to increasing demand from male clients.”

The pantyhose comes with a larger belt than for women as well as an opening, with “Men opaque”, “sheer” or “satin” available in four models of tights, with and without feet, and three models of feel-good knee-high hosiery made to help drain toxins and massage tired limbs.

TOKYO (Reuters) – As Japanese waistlines expand, so is the market for girdles — for men.

A new line of male underwear that flattens the stomach and lifts the hips proved so popular when introduced on a trial basis last month that some stores quickly sold out.

“Men are getting so much more fashion conscious these days that they’re starting to pay attention to the lines of their body and their silhouette, just like women,” said a spokeswoman at Triumph International Japan, a leading underwear firm.

Triumph marketed two different types of “long girdle” — one from the navel to the knees, and the other a “hip hugger” version to be worn with low-waisted pants.

Both sold so well that it plans to raise production and develop new variations, including a version for summer wear.

Other firms intend to launch similar products, according to business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun. One even plans to start selling underwear that lifts and shapes the upper body as well.

One factor behind the boom, which has made the girdles popular not only among middle-aged men but also those in their 20s and 30s, is likely to be a growing weight problem among once slim Japanese.

According to a Health Ministry report issued last month, some 29 percent of men aged 20-60 are overweight compared with 24 percent in 2000.

The Triumph spokeswoman, however, said most of the demand is due to new styles in pants that are cut to emphasise the hips. “It’s really more about style,” she said. “After all, there aren’t that many men in their 20s and 30s whose figures are giving way.”