Contemporary underwear. - A history of silhouettes!

Between the late 19th and late 20th centuries, several new types of lingerie emerged: nightgown-panties, bras, girdles, panties and briefs, petticoats, corsets, bustiers, garter belts, baby doll nightgowns, girdle-pants, and pantyhose. All of these pieces remain in use today, in different forms and fabrics, with varying degrees of success. At the same time, other older items, such as the crinoline, the bustle, and the corset, have returned to circulation – at least in a context of haute couture and in fetishistic rituals and practices – and certain other reappropriations have also expanded the repertoire: in the 1980s, for example, boxer shorts appeared as an item in the women's wardrobe – suits, sportswear, and underwear now constitute quite flexible categories. Our era is rarely considered in the history of underwear, as it has not been very inventive: indeed, one could argue that the only real novelty since the 1980s has been the bodysuit, or simply body. Probably derived from ballerina tights, it covers the body from the bust to the thigh, preventing access to other intimate parts. As a garment that can be used both as underwear and outerwear, the bodysuit fits into the taxonomy of intimate apparel. Sociologists since the 1960s, particularly Pierre Bourdieu, have familiarized us with the concept of embodiment – ​​a key element in any history of underwear: clothing, and by extension cosmetics, have become unparalleled social signifiers. Any analysis of the mechanics of contemporary underwear must be done from this perspective. Any attention given to the variety available and to underwear itself is inseparable from the study of the customs, projections, and transgressions associated with them. Between the mid-19th century and our era, we can distinguish three distinct periods in relation to underwear and the body. Until 1910-20, layering was the rule. The overlapping of skirts, breeches, shirts, and corsets, as well as the optical illusion effect of corsets and bustles, allowed underwear to be described as a kind of subterranean garment, an architectural foundation of the attire seen in society. A strictly ordered dress code clearly determined what was hidden and what was shown: the naked and the clothed. The clothed body was buried under layers of clothing, without regard for its actual morphology. From the beginning of the 20th century until the 1960s and 70s, the shaping of human anatomy itself became important. Underwear – the most direct intermediary between the body and clothing – strictly disciplined the figure. Female forms were molded according to the dictates of fashion, through the reinforcement provided by underwear.

A third phase, at the end of the 20th century, punctuates this history. The division between underwear and outerwear, between visible and invisible, began to seem more unstable. The skin itself became the new frontier of undressing. The interface of lingerie no longer served merely to receive or contain what overflowed from the body – on the contrary, underwear now acted to modify the surface and even the interior of the body. It was capable of cleaning, tanning, perfuming, moisturizing; it cared for the epidermis and firmed, renewed, and compressed the flesh. Underwear makes conspicuous and visible to all what it modifies; the same care is taken to ensure that beauty, health, strength, and flexibility are suggested – or rather, even seen. Underwear no longer hides; its purpose is to fully "reveal" the potential of a body and thus confirm the ideal of malleability. In response to the modesty and constraints of underwear in the 19th and 20th centuries, we have the tyranny of the visible in the 21st century. Instead of the values ​​of restriction, those of pleasure and flourishing are promoted – including role-playing, since humor is another form of flexibility. The uncomfortable response to the prohibition of external display is the concealment of the female body under the Islamic hijab. On the other hand, barely visible underwear suggests complicity, but is never free of ambiguity. Just think of the clothes emblazoned with designer labels in the years immediately following the turn of the millennium. At first glance, a 2008 item adorned with the name of the famous designer John Galliano in large letters on the waistband of the panties was simply vulgar self-promotion; but, on another level, it was a bold, even “intellectual,” response to aggressive marketing, an ironic critique of the irrepressible desire for media celebrity. Men's underwear marketed with a focus on the genitals is another example of underwear that is both playful and serious.

It is tempting to draw a parallel between the three “eras” of underwear described here and the three cultural periods corresponding to the types of Western capitalism analyzed by sociologists Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello. According to Max Weber, cited by the authors, this economic system does not simply impose itself through coercion and the interaction between force and exploitation; it also requires complicity – that is, the consensual belief of people in certain values, the personal involvement of the “protagonists” in the name of a common good. In this way, social agents undoubtedly “incorporate” these values ​​into their lifestyles, which makes it possible to draw pertinent parallels; the dominant values ​​fuel the imagination, lifestyles, and representations of the self presented by the universe of objects that demarcate the “territory of the ego.” Underwear would thus become the privileged markers of these territories. Analyzing how these objects assumed a gender, in this case the feminine, is another matter.

The first patriarchal form of capitalism was considered to be based on the principle of concentrating property and power in the same hands. It demanded from its leaders a set of contradictory qualities so that such accumulation would be both prudent and audacious. And “it is precisely this confusion of such diverse, even incompatible, arrangements and values ​​– greed for profit and moralism, avarice and charity, scientism and family traditionalism – that is at the origin of the division of the bourgeois class itself… that is, in the essence of what will become the most unanimously and enduringly denounced aspect of the bourgeois spirit: its hypocrisy.” A “double discourse” dress code was a fundamental part of this bourgeois “hypocrisy.” Amidst the “soft” layers of underwear, quite distinct from the clothing worn by women in society, surprising innovations emerged that would have caused public scandal: panties, nightgown-panties, bra-corsets. A clear visual separation distinguished underwear from outerwear. The lingerie repertoire, a vast wardrobe of undergarments, encompassed all possible "black and white" replicas of the outerwear wardrobe—as if the clothed body were merely covering pale duplicates of itself. Certain late 19th-century déshabillé pieces resemble tight-fitting, elegant urban outfits in two parts. But they are made of white cotton finished with English embroidery. The petticoats, adorned with Valenciennes lace appliqués, are cut in the same way as the fabric of the skirt itself. But the materials for petticoats are cotton, batiste, or muslin, for the finest. The closer to the surface, the more the ornamentation changes, and the petticoat closest to the skirt is made of colored satin. The second era of capitalism distinguished capital from power, which was delegated to leaders, directors, and bureaucrats. This economic and cultural system, solidly established since the 1930s, was based on strong disciplinary, hierarchical, and bureaucratic restrictions, tolerated in exchange for the promise of security and a promising future for its participants. It was this disciplinary corset that was so vehemently contested in the French protests of May 1968 and, more generally, by the libertarian spirit of the time – at the price of greater “flexibility” and less “mobility.” The rhetoric of the “liberation” of bodies became dominant. One of the notable effects of this ideology was that transgression became more difficult in contemporary lingerie culture. In the first era of lingerie, layering, furtive glances, and surprises were highly eroticized disturbances, grounded in the stratified system of clothing. In the second era, the repression of desire could manifest itself in stylistic detachment, indicated by the monotony of the new flesh-pink lingerie, through a series of clichés. Fetishistic displays of historical undergarments, such as the corset, are one example – stereotyped, for instance, by Yva Richard's erotic photographs published in Paris in the 1930s. Certain brands have elegantly exploited this form of cultivated historicism through a deviant fetishism. The Oh brand stockings, marketed by designer Jacques Fath in the mid-1950s, were typical. Their lacy ornamentation around the thigh was invisible when the wearer was dressed. This hidden edge heightened the fantasy associated with this type of garment. The name “Oh” suggests the playful pleasure of discovery. By the late 1960s, the provocative (sometimes rhetorical, sometimes demonstrative) pose was to dispense with undergarments and reject the various harnesses worn by the previous generation. And yet, twenty years later, these garments had become acceptable again: they no longer represented social or sexist restrictions, but fantasies in action. In the pages of so-called women's magazines, the free and mutable expression of personality, the pursuit of one's own peculiar desires, were exhaustively celebrated. In various social contexts—the workplace, for example—individuals were expected to "play the game." And an unsustainable contradiction arose from the ambivalent demands of playfulness and authenticity. Unexpectedly, the resolution of this contradiction and the critique of this ambivalent norm began to appear in the rediscovered game of appearances—fashion, in other words. A suitable mask to recreate imaginary underwear.

That was a brief history of underwear! To learn more, subscribe to our newsletter !