This is not your mother’s Tupperware party.
The type of confab once reserved for 1960s suburban housewives placing bulk orders for plastic containers is now hawking a very different product — men’s underwear.
Instead of tables stacked with kitchenware, the trunk shows involve a troupe of hunky male models stripped down to their skivvies.
Along with ogling the fellas, guests can sip and snack as they browse products from the start-up men’s underwear brand ALPHX — a party pitch Heidi Hapanowicz couldn’t resist.
“I was like, that sounds amazing, sign me up,” the personal brand photographer told The Post, recalling she was approached as the prospective host for the brand’s first-ever party in her Manhattan apartment.
ALPHX co-founders Garrett Swann and Tom Speight came up with the idea of updating the classic shindig to connect directly with consumers and get real-time product feedback.
They enlisted the help of business owners or friends to host a party with their “sphere of influence,” or about 30 people.
“Women bring their boyfriends, their spouses or friends, and it’s just a lot of fun,” Speight, who has held executive roles at Calvin Klein, Kate Spade and 2(X)IST, told The Post.
Hapanowicz remembers her mother hosting Tupperware and jewelry parties when she was just a little girl, but the shopping shindig in 2022 looked a bit different than the ones she grew up with.
“I had an apartment full of gay men walking around in underwear, but it was very wholesome,” Hapanowicz, 50, said, adding that the party, which featured sugar cookies cut and decorated like half-naked men, “sounds so much racier than it really was.”
“Quite frankly, [it was] as simple as if we were sharing Tupperware. Nobody thought anything of it.”
“This is a great way for people to go, ‘Oh, I’m going to go shop for underwear for my husband at a party,” Swann added, calling it “a win-win for everybody” since ALPHX doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar store.
When researching men’s buying habits, the duo found that one of the driving factors when purchasing new underwear is starting a new relationship — after all, no one wants a new partner to see their “ratty” undergarments, Speight noted.
“They’ll wear hole-y crap until we go upgrade it for them,” Meghan Weks, a relationship coach from Huntington Bay and past attendee of an ALPHX party, told The Post.
The “intimate” gift, she said, flips the script on an age-old tradition of men buying lingerie for women. Not to mention, buying underwear just is “not on a man’s radar,” quipped Weks, 44, who called the products the “Porsche of underwear.”
The brand averages around $1,000 in sales for a two-hour party, but the data doesn’t take into account repeat customers and word-of-mouth recommendations after the handful of events they’ve had so far.
Brooklyn-based marketing consultant Stephanie Taylor, 31, brought her boyfriend along to the brand’s most recent pop-up last month held at a Soho aesthetics clinic. The event, she said, removed “the weirdness out of the underwear shopping experience.”
“It’s almost like walking onto a QVC set and being able to touch something versus go online where my attention span is like five seconds,” she told The Post, adding that her boyfriend bought three or four pairs.
“I can see how those parties can definitely get someone to convert quicker.”
First-time customer Julian Andrew, 33, bought five pairs at the last ALPHX party in September, telling The Post he was intrigued by the “idea of a Tupperware party.”
He appreciated the opportunity to see and feel the product before purchasing, something that is lost in an era of online shopping where returns, especially for underwear, are a nuisance and prompts customers to default to legacy brands.
“I don’t think people so much care about the pomp and circumstance of, like, a Calvin Klein, as they do having a really great pair of underwear that fits perfectly,” said Andrew, who owns a talent management company.
“I don’t need Justin Bieber on a billboard selling me underwear. I need to know that these will fit my thighs.”
Shopping for and talking about underwear, he added, shouldn’t be so “taboo.”
“I think a huge part of it is also the community aspect of it,” he continued. “My friends who I haven’t seen in a long time, I got to see them at an event and talk to them and know that they bought the same pair of underwear as well and talk to them about their fit.”
Francesca DeCapita, 43, whose partner of 11 years Matthew Gerrior, 34, wears ALPHX, said the happening was “not sexual by any means” and likened it to a “networking event.”
While Hapanowicz said she’s still friends with some of the people she met at the first party she hosted years ago, adding that the living room parties are more “exciting” than shopping for underwear at the store.
“All they need is a charcuterie board, a few bottles of rosé and some underwear and they’re ready to go,” said Swann.
