So much for ‘unmentionables’ being, well, unmentionable! The Industry Standard is reporting that lingerie will now contain RFID tags at the the UK retailer, Marks & Spencer PLC. While the benefits of using these tags are surely great from an inventory standpoint, it has to a little strange from the shoppers point of view I would imagine.

U.K. retailer Marks & Spencer PLC (M&S) will extend its ongoing trial of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology for the management of its clothing stock from nine of its stores to 53 in the second quarter of next year.

“The feedback so far from our staff has been very positive in that the RFID tags have clearly improved our stock-taking process. What takes up to eight hours a week to do manually can be done with RFID tags in about an hour,” said M&S spokeswoman Olivia Ross on Wednesday. “Plus the staff have said that they find the technology easy to use: simply waving a scanner over a rack of clothes.”

RFID is a method for storing, receiving and transmitting data using antennas on tags that respond to radio frequency queries. Tags can be read when a remote scanner is passed over them. M&S began a trial of the technology itself in 2003 and then moved on to trial RFID on an item level in April 2004. The current trial is only for men’s suiting but will include women’s undergarments in 2006, Ross said.

“We are looking to test RFID with size-complex items, and for bras alone, there could be over 40 sizes,” Ross said. The extended trial is expected to run through the third quarter of 2006, after which the company plans to continue with additional tests. Ross said there are no plans for what items future trials would include or time lines for when RFID would move from the test stage to being used on a regular basis in M&S stores.

BT Group PLC will be the main contractor on the second phase of the trial, providing M&S with IT services like deployment assistance and maintenance of the RFID readers. BT is also assisting with the implementation of RFID in M&S’ food supply chain. M&S has contracted with Intellident Ltd. for the scanner technology, while the microchips are from EM Microelectronic-Marin SA.