History of Women's Lingerie: All About Panties, Bras and Stockings

During the last hundred years or so women have gained freedoms both politically and physically in ways that created a need for change in the way they dressed. In the era of the first Model T automobile, women went from being barefoot and pregnant to working and rallying the country together amidst war and economical depression. Their robust movements had a diverse effect on the types of clothing a woman wore and what previously worked for house cleaning and raising children no longer applied.

It was 1922 when the word lingerie first appeared in public. By the end of WWI young women wore cloche hats, bobbed their hair and began wearing shorter skirts to shimmy the night away dancing. The quest for flat chests, straight hips and buttocks, became the inspiration for the liberty bodice and the chemise. As a means of spicing up the view caused by flapping mini dresses, the first pastel panties were designed. Bras of the day were made to make breasts appear flat and boyish, the corset was no longer needed and this led to the question of how to keep the stockings from falling down mid-dance. The fashion industry was hard at work in attempts to create lingerie for women who previously were keeping as much skin under wraps as possible.

The term lingerie derives from the French word 'lin' which means linen. During the beginning of the 20^th century it was still being called underwear and was worn mainly for hygienic purposes. Frederick's of Hollywood began turning out prettier undergarments that slowly began to be associated with sex, thus any fashionable garments worn under clothing and were pretty were deemed as lingerie and has become engrained in today's terminology. Lingerie covers a wide variety of under garments but for the sake of this article I'm going to cover the history of three of the basics of lingerie; bras, panties and stockings.

Panties

Although panties are considered lingerie, they are really nothing more than underwear for women. Women first donned panties during the French Revolution thanks to Catherine de Medici who came up with the idea so that she could ride her horse with her leg folded in front of her across the horses neck without showing all the world her glory. Panties are still considered to be the most comfortable form of underwear to wear with elastic at the waist and fully covering the rump They are also considered to be the ugliest; often bringing forth images of our grandmother's bloomers. Many women have them in their lingerie drawer and wear them whenever there is no need for panty lines or naked parading.

Panties have gone through various stages of design and have transformed into a key fashion garment, ala lingerie. They have been the subject of curiosity and ridicule and have even been taken as a sign of sexual promiscuity. Nicknames for panties have been as adverse as their designs; they have been known as pantaloons, pantalets, bloomers, knickers, drawers, knickerbockers, camis, briefs and underwear. No other item of clothing or lingerie has caused as many mixed reactions throughout history as panties.

In the 1930s, the Dunlop Rubber Company invented lastex, it was a combination of latex rubber and ammonia. Abram Nathaniel Spanel started up the International Latex Co., now known as Playtex and in 1930 and began creating panties made of latex that were to be worn by toddlers but were not considered to be diaper covers. In 1939, a New York department store featured an ad for panty girdle briefs. They sold for $5.00, which was a whole day's wage for most people then. Panty girdles were very much like long athletic shorts are today, the provided support and good hygiene.

Women began demanding that lingerie manufacturers create lines of lingerie to make their form look more feminine during the 1960's. They felt underwear of their time was restricting and created to distort the female figure. They succeeded and panties began to evolve into something soft and pretty. Just ten years later in the 70's women's sexual revolution took hold of the lingerie industry and panties continued to get smaller, skinnier and sexier.

Today lingerie companies like Frederick's of Hollywood and Victoria's Secret have annual modeling shows and national commercials to promote their lingerie. Society has changed from hiding what we have on underneath to showing it off.

Bras

The first modern bra to be widely used and recognized was created by Mary Phelps Jacob. She fashioned it out of silk handkerchiefs and pink ribbons in 1913. Although she did not invent the concept of the bra, it was her design that was first patented. She had a hard time convincing women to buy her product so she finally sold the concept to Warners for $1,500. Warners is still in the lingerie business even today. It was sometime after 1918 that women began shortening the term brassiere to bra and we have been calling it that ever since.

Bra history made another drastic change in 1935 when Warners introduced cup sizing to the lingerie world. They were the original labelers of the A, B, C and D sizes we know and use today. Great Britain didn't adopt this sizing method until into the 1950's. It was at this point bras began separating breasts rather than maintaining them as one solid mass across the chest.

The neatest bra design, in my opinion, is the one created by Howard Hughes for Jane Russell to wear in The Outlaw in 1943. The Outlaw's release was held back for three years while he worked on his design. In the end Russell decided against wearing his bra stating, "Yes, Howard Hughes invented a bra for me. Or, he tried to. And one of the seamless ones like they have now. He was way ahead of his time. But I never wore it in 'The Outlaw'. And he never knew. He wasn't going to take my clothes off to check if I had it on. I just told him I did."

In 1968 Feminists burned their bras at a Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City as part of a demonstration of their newly found liberation. I doubt they realized that without proper support the results would be sagging boobs many years later which is odd since so many women opted for the confines of the sports bra invented by Hina Miller, Lisa Lindahl and Polly Smith in '77.

In 2000 the engineers that built the Millennium Bridge got into the lingerie business and helped create the Charnos Bioform bra. Extreme stress analysis studies were done to help alleviate the aches and pains modern bras have neglected to address. It cost a whopping two million dollars to develop and has been hailed as one of the most important developments in women's underwear.

Stockings

Nylon stockings were first introduced in the 19^th century as the mother of the thigh-high. They were originally attached to garters, attached to corsets with suspenders. The Du Pont Company invented nylon, it was first used in fishing line and surgical sutures until was discovered that it made excellent stockings. DuPont's nylon stockings first appeared in New York department stores in 1940. 64 million pairs were sold that year and manufacturers couldn't keep up with demand.

When WWII came on the scene all the production of nylon went into the war effort. Nylon was being used to manufacture parachutes and tents. American soldiers gave away stockings to young British women in exchange for dates. In the USA, stockings were very hard to come by so women painted lines on the back of their legs to look like seams so that they appeared to be wearing stockings.

The 1960's saw skirt's hem lines rise and stockings went out of style since they couldn't be worn without garters. May women simply stopped wearing stockings in lieu of tights or panty hose which had just been invented in 1959 by Allen Grant Sr. The only draw back to panty hose were the infections caused by too little air in such a moist place. Even though panty hose have stayed with us and many women today wear them, their obvious drawback has brought stockings back to the front lines. Today's stockings don't have to be held up by garters thanks to that little nifty invention of the gripper that keeps them from sliding down your legs.