Encyclopedia
Undergarments, also called "underwear", "
lingerie" , or sometimes "intimate clothing" and "pants" in British English are
clothes worn next to the
skin, usually under other clothes.
Uses
Some clothing is specifically underwear, while some is also used as
swimsuit , and both
T-shirts and some shorts are suitable as underwear as well as outer clothing. Suitability as outer clothing is, apart from outdoor or indoor climate, largely a social and sometimes even a legal matter. One of the criteria for shorts not to be suitable as outer clothing may be that it has a fly that avoids exposure of the genitals just by an overlap of cloth, without buttons etc.
In addition to keeping outer garments from soiling, undergarments are worn for a variety of reasons: warmth, comfort and hygiene being the most common. Undergarments are often used for
modesty or erotic display; sometimes both of these motivations are simultaneously present.
Undergarments can also have
religious significance, as in the special temple garment worn by followers of the
LDS Church . Some Jews use clothing that should neither touch the skin, nor be used as outer clothing:
tallit katan or tallet ketannah or
tzitzit. Every Jewish boy and man is supposed to wear Tzitzis ?on undergarments, every day and always when attending synagogue . Some Hindus wear a Sacred Thread underneath their clothing that is supported on the left shoulder and wrapped around the body, falling underneath the right arm.
The two major types of men's underpants are
boxer shorts and
briefs , which are also referred to as
Y-fronts in
British English.
History
Ancient history
The
loincloth is the simplest form of underwear; it was probably the first undergarment worn by human beings. A loincloth may take three major forms. The first, and simplest, is simply a long strip of material which is passed between the legs and then around the waist. The ancient Hawaiian malo was of this form, as are several styles of the Japanese
fundoshi. Another form is usually called a cache-sexe: a triangle of cloth is provided with strings or loops, which are used to fasten the triangle between the legs and over the genitals. The alternate form is more skirt-like: a cloth is wrapped around the hips several times and then fastened with a girdle.
In warmer climates, the loincloth may be the only clothing worn , as was doubtlessly its origin, but in colder temperatures, the loincloth often forms the basis of a person's clothing and is covered by other garments. In most ancient civilizations, this was the only undergarment available .
Men are said to have worn loincloths in ancient Greece and Rome.
It is not clear whether Greek women wore undergarments. 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.
The loincloth continues to be worn by people around the world . In various -mainly tropical- cultures, the traditional male dress may still prescribe only a single garment below the waist or even at all, without underwear or only optionally, including the Far eastern
Dhoti and
Lungi or the Scottish
kilt.
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Male undergarments
In the
Middle Ages, western men's underwear became looser fitting. The loincloth was replaced by loose, trouser-like clothing called braies, which the wearer stepped into and then laced or tied around the waist and legs at about mid-calf. Wealthier men often wore
chausses as well, which only covered the legs.
By the
Renaissance, the chausses became form-fitting like modern
Hose, and the braies became shorter to accommodate longer styles of chausses. However, chausses and many braies designs were not intended to be covered up by other clothing, so they are not actually underwear in the strictest sense.
Braies were usually fitted with a flap in the front that buttoned or tied closed. This
codpiece allowed men to urinate without having to remove the braies completely.
Henry VIII of
England began padding his own codpiece, which caused a spiraling trend of larger and larger codpieces that only ended by the end of the 16th century.
The modern men's
shirt appeared during this era, but it was originally an undergarment. Renaissance noblemen also adopted the doublet, a vest-like garment tied together in the front and worn under other clothing.
Female undergarments
Medieval women usually wore a close-fitting garment called a
chemise or sometimes a
shift or
smock, sometimes coupled with braies-like 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 and forced them to wear
chastity belts. There is no reference, image, or surviving belt to support this story. In fact most historians of this period are of the view that chastity belts were worn to prevent sexual assault and that the woman kept the key.
Enlightenment and 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 late 19th century for men, women and children was the
union suit, which provided coverage from the wrists to the ankles . 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. Drawers for women were not generally worn until the mid-nineteenth century when the adoption of
crinolines made them necessary for reasons of modesty and warmth.
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 . 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
pantalettes 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 .
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.
1900s
By the early 20th century, the mass-produced undergarment industry was booming, and competition forced producers to come up with all sorts of innovative and gimmicky designs to compete. The Hanes company emerged from this boom and quickly established itself as a top manufacturer of union suits.
Textile technology continued to improve, and the time to make a single union suit dropped from days to minutes.
Meanwhile, designers of women's undergarments relaxed the
corset. The invention of new, flexible but supportive materials allowed them to remove the whalebone and steel while still providing support. The emancipation or liberty bodice offered an alternative to constricting corsets, and in
Australia and the
United Kingdom, the liberty bodice became a standard item, for girls as well as women.
1910s
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 was a weekly magazine [i] published in the United States [i] from August 4 [i] ...
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.
In 1912, the United States had its first professional underwear designer. Lindsay "Layneau" Boudreaux, an immigrant from France established the short lived panty company "Layneau". Though her company closed within one year, it had a significant impact on many levels. Boudreaux showed the world that an American woman could establish and run a company, and she also caused a revolution in the underwear industry. Boudreaux is possibly the reason why up-scale underware and panty stores exist today.
By the end of the decade, trouser-like "bloomers" 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.
Meanwhile, the soldiers of World War I were issued button-front shorts as underwear. The buttons attached to a separate piece of cloth, or
yoke, sewn to the front of the garment, and tightness of fit was adjusted by means of ties on the sides. This design proved so popular that it began to supplant the union suit in popularity by the end of the war. Garments of
rayon also became widely available in the post-war period.
1920s
In the 1920s, manufacturers shifted emphasis from durability to comfort. Union suit ads raved about "patented" new designs that reduced the number of buttons and increased accessibility. Most of these experimental designs had to do with new ways to hold closed the crotch flap common on most union suits and drawers. A new woven cotton fabric called nainsook gained popularity in the 1920s for its durability. Retailers also began selling preshrunk undergarments.
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.
1930s
Modern men's underwear was largely an invention of the 1930s. On January 19, 1935 Coopers Inc. sold the world's first
briefs in
Chicago, Illinois. The company placed a Y-shaped front and overlapping fly on knitted drawers in both short and long styles. They dubbed the design the "
Jockey" since it offered a degree of support that had previously only been available from the
jockstrap . Jockey briefs proved so popular that over 30,000 pairs were sold within three months of their introduction.
Meanwhile, other companies began selling buttonless drawers fitted with an elastic waistband, the first true
boxer shorts . Scovil Manufacturing also introduced the
snap fastener at this time, which became a popular addition to various kinds of undergarments.
Women of this decade brought the
corset back, now called the
girdle. The garment lacked the whalebone and metal supports and usually came with a
brassiere and often garters attached.
1940s
During
World War II, elastic waistbands and metal snaps gave way once again to button fasteners due to
rubber and
metal shortages. Undergarments were harder to find, as well, since soldiers abroad had priority to get them.
At war's end, Jockey and Hanes remained the industry leader in the United States, but Cluett, Peabody and Company would make a name for itself when it introduced a preshrinking process called
Sanforization, which came to be licensed by most major manufacturers.
Meanwhile, 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.
1950s and 1960s
In the 1950s, underwear manufacturers began marketing printed and colored garments. What had once been a simple, white piece of clothing not to be shown in public suddenly became a
fashion statement. The manufacturers also experimented with rayon and newer fabrics like
dacron and
nylon. By 1960, men's underwear was regularly printed in loud patterns or with images ranging from messages to cartoon characters.
Women's undergarments began to emphasize the
breasts instead of the waist in the 1950s. The decade saw the introduction of the
bullet bra, which featured pointed cups.
Fredericks of Hollywood's push-up bra finally hit it big in this decade as well. Meanwhile, women's panties had become even more colorful and decorative, and by the mid-Sixties were also available in two smaller, more abbreviated styles called the hip-hugger and the bikini , frequently in sheer nylon fabric.
Panty hose, also called "tights" in British English, which combined panties and hose into one garment, made their first appearance in 1959, invented by Glen Raven Mills of
North Carolina. The company later introduced
seamless panty hose in 1965, spurred by the popularity of the
miniskirt.
Present day
Underwear as fashion matured in the 1970s and 1980s, and underwear advertisers forgot about comfort and durability, at least in advertising. Sex appeal became the main selling point, in swimwear as well, bringing to fruition a trend that had been building since at least the flapper era .
- Performers in the 1980s such as Madonna and Cyndi Lauper also got into the act, often wearing undergarments on top of other clothes.
Later, in the 1990s,
hip hop stars would popularize a similar style, known as the
sag, which allowed loosely fitting
blue jeans or
shorts to droop low, exposing the underwear. In fact, in the case of
Mark Wahlberg, it was his success as underwear model for
Calvin Klein that allowed him a double launch to showbiz fame as the first white hip hop star and as a respectable Hollywood hunk.
- 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.
- In the 1990s, retailers started selling boxer briefs, which take the longer shape of boxers but maintain the tightness of briefs. Though marketed as a new design, these are actually quite similar to the bottom half of the two-part union suits worn in the 1910s.
Underwear styles and function
Today, there are many options in underwear available. These include:
- boxer style
- woven boxer
- knit boxer
- boxer brief
- pouch boxer brief
- athletic-style
- retro style
- brief style
- traditional brief
- double seat brief or double back brief
- diagonal flap brief
- pouch brief
- low-cut/low-rise brief
- bikini brief
There are also many types of long underwear, union suits, and other variations of men's underwear. Some
underpants also have a fly. These usually do not allow detachment at the waist; elasticity allows them to be taken on and off. Usually the fly of underpants avoids exposure of the skin just by an overlap of cloth, without buttons, etc. Such a property may be one of the criteria for
boxer shorts not to be suitable as outer clothing.
Today, there are many other specialized types of underwear made for sexual purposes, such as
edible underwear. Most of these are meant simply to display the body or genitals in certain ways, while some are intended to provide genital stimulation as well.
Frederick's of Hollywood is an example of a business centered around manufacturing and selling such underwear.
Not wearing undergarments
Not wearing undergarments under one's outer clothing is known in American slang as
freeballing for men or
freebuffing for females; the terms
going commando and
going bareback are also used for both sexes .
This trend shows that not everybody considers underwear essential for hygiene, especially for modern people who bathe every day.
In situations where a certain amount of body coverage is required , people who prefer to go
clothes free might enjoy not wearing undergarments, as that is the closest they can get to
nudity. For others, there may be sexual motives; undergarments are the final physical barrier to sex, and not wearing them might be arousing.
Cycling shorts and
swimwear such as board shorts are usually worn without underwear. Often the same applies for a
kilt; the uniforms of several Scottish military regiments mandate wearing no underwear with the kilt except at specified occasions.
Underwear exposed above trousers
Underwear is sometimes partly exposed above the
trousers when sitting, bending over, etc., or permanently. This depends on the style of trousers , the style of underwear, and the way they are worn. It may be accidental or deliberate. When women show their underwear in this way it is sometimes called a "visible panty line", or VPL. When women wearing thong underwear expose themselves in this way, it is sometimes called a "
whale tail".
See also
Further reading
- The History of Underclothes by C. Willett Cunnington & Phillis Cunnington, 1951, Dover
External links
