A History of Lingerie

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to take you on a historical journey full of allure, mystery, and desire of sinful proportions. I speak of course about the history of lingerie.'

Walking along the main street or a local shopping mall, it doesn’t seem like just a hundred years ago that the idea of women’s underwear would be a taboo and unspoken topic. Strolling past Victoria’s Secret (I personally begin to wonder what “secrets” Victoria really has left) one must wonder how we reached this point. The lingerie industry is a boundless and rich commerce. In 2003 the global lingerie market was estimated around $29 billion dollars (that billion with a “B”). Out of those sales, bras made up about 56% of the sales and underwear were 29% of the sales, leaving the additional 15% made up in corsets, hosiery, garter belts, etc.

But how did we get from hiding bloomers from our husbands to selling crotchless panties on the thoroughfare?

To start, we must understand the original purpose of undergarments. There are three typical reasons behind underwear:

1.       To alter the outward shape of a person (primarily women)

 By this I mean bustles, corsets, bloomers, brassieres, crinoline, and petticoats. All of these items were designed to shape the female form to suit social and fashionable tastes. Bras make boobs look perkier, corsets make waists look slimmer, and bustles make women look like they have large, flouncing bottoms.

2                       Hygiene

This idea speaks for itself really. The original undergarments, loincloths, kept dirt and other foreign objects out of private areas while people were farming, herding, working, cooking, or just sitting down. I don’t see a lot of people today who feel comfortable dropping their bare bum on to any old surface, and neither did our ancestors.

3            Modesty

This one, much like the first concept, is all about social standards. Tribes in the Amazon do not go around forcing women to wear bras, but very few women in America would dare go out without putting on one. It’s all about what your culture says is proper and expected.

Now that we know why humans created undergarments, the question is how did we go from loincloths to the Wonder Bra?

For that we go back to the end of the 19^th Century and Victorian England. Now fashion and women’s underwear has had a few changes from the loincloth to the corset, but it takes a dramatic leap at this point in time. Before now, undergarments for women are heavy, cumbersome, constricting, and even deadly. That’s right, some women are laced up so tight that they start to die!

That’s because of two major things. The first is the fact that undergarments for the past 100 years haven’t really improved much. The materials have changed but the basic concept is the same. 

Bloomers and petticoats to cover the legs and genitals, and a tightly strung up corset to keep the breast and waist in check. This leads to the second aspect, the wasp waist. For the Victorians, thin was in. They like woman with full figures that had itty-bitty little waists, called Wasp Waist. So that meant women were striving to have a handsome dosage of cleavage, a think, round set of hips, and as little as possible in the middle. The steel boned corset, an invention of the industrial age, helped to achieve this look.  Prior to this corsets had stays or “bones” made from wood or whale bone. These stays were often carved by the suitors of the young woman. (Interestingly, these bones press against a woman’s hips and pubic when she sits. Or in other words, a young man carved a bit of wood to be slid in between the bosom of a young lady who feels it pressing into her pubic region every time she has a sit. Talk about pressing your claim, lads!)

Steel stays in a corset were a lot less flexible than their forefathers and they could squeeze harder and longer too. This often led to women passing out (the often overplayed “swoon” you see if movies), miscarriages (they literally crushed the baby out of the womb), rearrangement of organs, and the misshaping of ribs. Not a pretty thought!

Thankfully, the corseted women of the world had people like Lady Duff-Gordon looking out for them. This fine noblewoman campaigned for women to break free of their overwhelming petticoats and crushing corsets and take up more practical undergarments, something a little more similar to men’s underwear, which at the time looked a bit like linen rompers.

Of course this movement had a lot of backlash in the tightly constrained (pun intended) Victorian society. It wouldn’t be until the 20^th century that women would be freed from their corseted costumes.

We have World War I to thank for that freedom. As the men of Europe marched off to war, the women took up the labor force. But really, what woman can work 12 hours in a factory making guns and bullets and airplanes while wearing close to 20 pounds of petticoats? It simply wasn’t plausible. 

So women gave up their corsets and petticoats for more comfortable, swimsuit like undergarments.

It’s around this time that a woman named Mary Phelps Jacob made the first ever patent for the brassiere. This little invention would free women from the corset forever. The original bra looked a bit like a bib with shoulder straps and a tie that went around your middle. Not really the luxurious wonder we see on runways today, but it was a good start.

After the war was over, women didn’t want to go back to the stuffy and confining clothing of the past. Instead, the image of the sleek, silhouetted dame became popular and the new brassiere helped give the modern woman her lithe new frame.

As time passed, underwear got smaller and more form fitting, while bras got more supportive and sometimes outrageous in shape. Bras also began to come in different cup sizes, instead of one size fits all, with adjustable bands and straps. The material of the bra went from stiff linen to silks, satins, cottons, nylons, and even hemp.

The undergarments of women remained rather hush-hush still until the 1960’s with the Counter Culture. Vendors like Fredrick’s of Hollywood began marketing women’s undergarments as sexy, enticing, playful merchandise that could be sold out in the open. Thanks to these bold marketers, modern woman can walk into any store without feeling like they’re doing something taboo when they need to buy a bra. Instead, lingerie is a glamorized industry where woman are free to express their sensuality, even if it is only underneath their blouses.

So ladies, and gentlemen, we’ve come to the end of our history lesson, but not to the end of bras. Today, as the market and demand for better fitting, feeling, and sexier lingerie grows, innovations in underwear continue. I encourage every woman that reads this to go and get a proper fitting at retailer (stores like Victoria Secret and Lane Bryant have helpful employees that are trained to help you find your perfect size free of charge). Studies show that up to 80% of women are wearing the wrong size bra and it could be doing damage to her body. In a world so full of innovation, this is unacceptable. 

Be proud, ladies, and be bold. Our fore-mothers didn’t toss off the corset and stays for us to wallow around in an uncomfortable bra.

Until next time, keep exploring!