Lingerie History Overview

The History of Lingerie

Adapted from www.wikipedia.org

 

Lingerie in Ancient Times

 

Women's undergarments were created to emphasize the silhouette by shaping up breasts, waist and hips with the sole purpose of rendering the female figure more attractive. The first recorded corset comes from Crete and dates back to about 2000 BC. At that time, it wasn't only a piece of clothing but already an ornament, being adorned sometimes with a pin or a brooch. Later on in Greece, fabrics made of leather and woolen hit the mainstream.

 

Roman women sometimes wore wrapped breastcloths or brassieres made of soft leather. They also seem to have worn loincloths and possibly something like panties. Decorative frescoes survive showing semi-nude women cavorting in breastwraps and loincloths.  Any cloth used may have been wool, linen, or linsey-woolsey blend. Only the upper classes could have afforded imported silk.

 

Lingerie in the Middle Ages

 

Medieval women usually wore a close-fitting garment called a shift, smock, or chemise, sometimes coupled with leg wrappings.  They may have worn petticoats over the shift and under the dress. Quilted petticoats could be worn during the winter. Elaborately-quilted petticoats might be displayed by a cut-away dress, in which case they became a skirt rather than an undergarment.

 

During the 16th century, the farthingale was popular. This was a petticoat stiffened with reed or willow rods so that it stood out from a woman's body, like a cone extending from the waist.

 

Corsets also began to be worn about this time. At first they were called pair of bodies, which may refer both to a stiffened bodice designed to be seen, and a bodice stiffened with buckram, reeds, canes, whalebone, etc., worn underneath another, decorative, bodice. These were not the small-waisted, curvy corsets familiar from the Victorian period, but straight-lined corsets that flattened the bust.

 

There is a myth that Crusaders, worried about the fidelity of their wives, forced them to wear chastity belts, however, chastity belts weren't invented for another 100 years.

 
Lingerie in the Industrial Age

 

The inventions of the spinning jenny machines and the cotton gin in the second half of the 18th century made cotton fabrics widely available. This allowed factories to mass-produce underwear, and for the first time, people began buying undergarments in stores rather than making them at home. The standard undergarment of the 19th century for men, women, and children was the union suit, which provided coverage from the wrists to the ankles (this "second skin" style is more commonly known as long johns today). The union suits of the era were usually made of knitted material and included a drop flap in the back to ease visits to the toilet.

 

In the 18th century, women began wearing stays, a type of undergarment that wraps around the torso from behind and ties closed in the front. These stays were often stiffened in the 1750s and 1760s, when they became known as the corset. Different colors became available (though linings remained white). The corset remained popular with aristocratic women well into the 19th century, when the design was modified to fit much more tightly. A tiny waist came to be seen as a symbol of beauty, and the corsets were laced with whalebone or steel to accomplish this. This caused great pain to most women, and some even suffered damage to internal organs and bones as a result. These later corsets did not wrap around the breasts as their predecessors had. Breasts were thrust outward by many corset designs, but were otherwise allowed to hang loose.

 

The corset was usually worn over a thin shirt-like garment of cotton or muslin called a shift. In the latter half of the 19th Century, long drawers called pantalets or pantaloons often accompanied the shift to keep the legs out of sight as skirts styles got shorter.

 

The other major female undergarment of this period was the Crinoline petticoat. This underskirt served a similar purpose to the farthingales of the Renaissance, only the petticoat kept skirts full by means of stiff fabrics and numerous layers rather than hoops. It also differed in that it was fairly inexpensive, and therefore commoners and aristocrats alike could afford to wear it (though wealthy women could usually afford petticoats of finer material and of more elaborate design).

 

The bustle, a frame or pad worn over the buttocks to enhance their shape, had been used off and on by women for two centuries, but it reached the height of its popularity 1880, and went out of fashion for good in the 1890s.

 

Lingerie in the Early 20th Century (1900-1950)

 

The increase in the number of underwear manufacturers necessitated the birth of undergarment advertising. The first underwear print advertisement in the United States ran in the Saturday Evening Post in 1911 and featured oil paintings by J.C. Leyendecker of the "Kenosha Klosed Krotch". Early underwear advertisements placed emphasis on durability and comfort; fashion was never a selling point.

 

By the end of the 1910s, Chalmers Knitting Company split the union suit into upper and lower sections, effectively inventing the modern undershirt and drawers. Women wore lacier versions of this basic duo known as the camisole and drawers.

 

In 1913, a New York socialite named Mary Phelps Jacob changed women's fashion forever when she cobbled the first brassiere together by tying two handkerchiefs together with ribbon. Jacob's original intention was to cover the whalebone sticking out of her corset, which was visible through her sheer dress. Jacob began making brassieres for her family and friends, and word of mouth soon spread about the garment. By 1914, Jacob had a patent for her design and was marketing it throughout the United States. Although women had worn brassiere-like garments years past, Jacob's was the first to be successfully marketed and widely adopted.

 

By the end of the decade, trouser-like "bloomers" (popularized by Amelia Jenks Bloomer [1818-1894] but invented by Elizabeth Smith Miller) gained popularity with the so-called Gibson girls who enjoyed more athletic pursuits such as bicycling and tennis. This new female athleticism helped push the corset out of style, as well. The other major factor in the corset's demise was the fact that metal was in short supply in much of the world during World War I. Steel-laced corsets were dropped in favor of the brassiere.

 

During the 1920's women's bloomers became much shorter and stockings covered the legs instead. The shorter bloomers became looser and less supportive as the boyish flapper look came into fashion. By the end of the decade, they came to be known as step-ins, very much like modern panties but with wider legs, worn for the increased flexibility they afforded.

 

As dancing became a favorite pastime of young flappers, the garter belt was invented to keep stockings from falling. Nevertheless, the increased sexuality of the flapper also made underwear sexier than ever before. It was the flappers who ushered in the era of lingerie.

 

A Russian immigrant named Ida Rosenthal further developed the brassiere in this decade when she introduced modern cup sizes in 1928 for her company, Maidenform.

 

During the 1940's, some women readopted the corset once again, now called the waspie for the wasp-shaped waistline it gave the wearer. Many women began wearing the strapless bra, as well, which gained popularity for its ability to push the breasts up and enhance cleavage.

 

Lingerie in Modern Times

 

Although it was worn for decades by exotic dancers, the thong first gained popularity in South America, particularly in Brazil, in the 1980s. It was originally a style of swimsuit made so that the back of the suit is so thin that it disappears between the buttocks. By the 1990s, the design had made its way to most of the Western World, and thong underwear became popular. Today, thong underwear is one of the fastest selling styles available among women and is even gaining some popularity among men.
 

Today's lingerie is available in just about any style and fabric you can imagine.  From romantic babydolls made of silk, to erotic leather bustiers, Lingerie Diva has it all.