Tuesday 13 March 2012

When Pants go Stratospheric!!

This Tagxedo contains the key to how to become a billionaire...

I had never heard of Sara Blakely before I woke up this morning. Now I know that the sales of pants have made her into a super billionaire. However, they are not your usual "pants". They are in fact called "Spanx" and they make people look slimmer.

Why have I chosen to focus on this story? Reading through the very interesting post on Yahoo News Online, I came across the idiom "have a brainwave".

To "have a brainwave" means to have a brilliant idea. What was Sara Blakely's brainwave, which has made her the youngest self-made billionaire in the world? Simple really.

"Blakely had the brainwave of cutting the feet out of a pair of tights (or panty hose as they are known in the US) to create a smoothing and firming effect. However, when she wore the cut off tights underneath her trousers she found the tights rolled up her legs all night.

This wardrobe malfunction meant an idea was born. At 29, Blakely invested her life savings of $5,000 (£3,190) trying to come up with something flattering to wear under white trousers. Control hosiery Spanx was born and Blakely wrote the patent herself to save money
."

You can read more here.

I'm always on the look-out for idioms in context. You can't get a better context than Sara Blakely's amazing brainwave...

I have summarised the article as a tweet in under 140 characters. I have used an idiom (have a brainwave), a fairly new expression ( have a wardrobe malfunction) and a phrasal verb (come up with = produce, think of).





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