How Trendy Lingerie Came to Be
Lingerie was not always such a bright mish mash of different textures, fabrics and colors as it is today. It was also not always worn if we want to believe that everyone was nude in the Garden of Eden. The first pieces of lingerie can be traced bake to Egypt and Greece. In ancient Crete women also wore a form of bustier and in ancient Rome women wore a device called the strophium which supported the breast.
In the Middle Ages women wore many linen undergarments to protect beautiful garments made out of expensive silk from being stained by body fluids. As small breasts were in style women wore flat band aid style bras that constricted their breasts. The true corset did not really turn up until the fifteenth century and the carvings on the breast bone piece were acknowledged to be an art form.
During the Elizabethan era a torturous garment called the farthingale, which pushed the breast outwards and cinched the waist in was in fashion as it suggested fertility. The farthingale was detested because it appeared to mold a woman’s body out of shape and it was painful to wear.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth century women endured decades of whalebone undergarments including corsets and crinolines. These were worn with pantaloons and layers of petticoats. The corset’s tyrannical reign did not end until around 1913 when Mary Phelps Jacobs first invented the brassier. Girdles first became all of the rage in the 1920s as the Flapper style of fashion demanded long narrow bodies with flat stomachs.
Lingerie as we know it today first came into being in the 1930s when movie stars like Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich began to wear slinky satin fabrics and more structured undergarments that emphasized an hourglass figure. Latex rubber, under wiring and elastic were also seen in these garments for the first time.
In the 1950s Howard Hughes designed the famous cantilever bra for his girlfriend Jane Russell. This was the quintessential atomic age garment with the missile silo shaped bra cups.
In the sixties there was a rebellion against wearing bras, thanks to the feminist movement but lingerie returned with a vengeance in the seventies and eighties as garments made out of Lycra and other stretchy materials. Padded and molded bras (such as the ones made by Victoria’s Secret, Warner’s and Wonder bra) were invented so no seams ever showed beneath a sweater.
Since then some lingerie has become quite avenge grade and most of it so elegant and beautiful that it was worn exposed through open clothing and sheer clothing. All through the 1990s it was worn on its own in the form of bra tops, camisoles and slips dresses instead of being hidden away beneath other clothes. Punchy and creative designers such as Vivienne Westwood and Jean Paul Gautier started to play with the concept of underwear as outerwear and to this day quite a bit of lingerie are considered to be couture.