The first mesoporous materials (pore diameter between 20 and 100 Angstrom) were discovered just five years ago. A new approach to mesoporous materials by direct templating of lyotropic liquid crystals is reviewed and compared with strategies reported previously, The direct templating method is shown to be very versatile. It is suggested that the resulting materials can almost be termed ''second generation'' mesoporous materials, owing to the broad variety of mesoporous structure and size, high degree of ordering, and low incidence of defects.