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| Sunday, 9 October 2005 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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The history of lingerie :
Less is more to see
Those Who Enjoy Sexy Lingerie... What man doesn't thoroughly enjoy getting home from work and finding his lover waiting for him dressed in a set of sexy lingerie? What woman doesn't enjoy the wonderful feeling of looking sensuous when wearing a few lacy items that only accentuate her natural curves and make her all the more alluring? What couple doesn't get turned on to each other when she is dressed in lace and he is likewise decked out in a satin set of briefs and a matching robe? Besides the department store and catalog resources, most cities have at least one shop that caters to a clientele which appreciates the more risque' types of lingerie. In recent years, these establishments have become sophisticated enough for both men and women to shop in openly. Seeing couples purusing the various items on display has become common place. If you are not satisfied with the Victoria's Secret kind of intimate wear, perhaps a trip to such a shop in your area would result in some purchases more to your liking. However, those who live in more rural or remote areas can still find some extremely nice items via catalogs or by using Internet resources. Enjoying intimacy following the slow disrobing of a beautiful set of lingerie can enhance a sexual encounter in many wonderful ways. Treating a man to a visual display of physical femininity is sure to solicit a loving response. Couples who share this kind of prelude to intimacy, whether it is often or occassional, will find themselves reminded that those who work at love are sure to enjoy it all the more. Lingerie. The very word is characteristically feminine, packed with a sense of excitement, sensuality, and elegance. Lingerie evokes so much more than the dull collection of everyday underwear that a woman wears under her clothes. Lingerie Uncovered looks to capture this, the essence of lingerie and more. Lingerie of Bygone Eras:
Today, lingerie blends practicality with a sense of playfulness that is truly modern. You can boost your feminine charms or trim your bottom line with fabrics that are both functional and comfortable. Bras come with or without padding, and the ultra-padded bras can produce astonishing cleavage effects. You can stay with the basics, treat yourself with luxurious silks, or indulge your fantasies with the most lavish of lingerie. Above all, lingerie is fun and very different today, from the tortures endured of lingerie past. As long as there have been women, there has been lingerie. At times, it was practical. At others, painful. And at yet others, it approached a work of art. Today, lingerie combines practicality with a sense of playfulness that's strictly modern. You can boost your front assets or trim your bottom line with fabrics that are both effective and comfortable. You can stick with the basics, pamper yourself with luxurious silks, or indulge your fantasies with the most lavish lingerie. As with other areas of life, women today have more undergarment choices than ever before in history. Take a look back with us, and see how we got here. How long has "lingerie" been going on? Try the second millennium B.C., when the women of Crete wore a simple corset that supported their breasts at the base, then thrust them up and outward, boldly naked. It was definitely a strong fashion statement by a society who worshipped a host of female divinities. Things were a little more mild in the Middle Ages. Small, firm breasts were back in style, and women wore a multitude of corset-like variations - the cotte, the bliaunt, the surcot - which slipped on over their dresses and hugged the breasts tightly. (Lest anyone overlook this smaller bust, one fashion fad was the wearing of small bells along the neckline - surely the only jingling breasts in history!) Toward the end of the Renaissance, Spain (the dominant empire of the time) set a more serious standard for fashion as an upholder of virtue. The padded silhouette came into being, with a flat stomach, narrow waist, and cone-shaped bust. The corset became a virtual straitjacket, molding women's bodies into unnatural shapes, compressing their internal organs, and frequently causing their ribs to overlap one another. What was often called "a fit of the vapors" - a symbol of feminine weakness - was actually the result of too much pressure applied to the stomach and solar plexus, causing women to faint at the drop of a hat. In the eighteenth century, life lightened up a bit and the elegant society of the salons was ruled by women. Their bodies were still ruled by the corset, which achieved an artistry never seen before in undergarments. Lavish use of damask, satin or brocaded silk, embellished with embroidery, ribbons and exquisite laces, disguised the rigid structure of whalebone within. Corsets of the day compressed breasts from below to make them bulge upward, looking as though they were ready to pop out. They also served to separate the aristocracy from the commoners, who wore a simple front-lacing cotte. In the 1770s, revolution was in the air and a crusade was launched against the corset, with doctors, philosophers, writers and naturalists agitating for the abolishment of this "body press." Boned corsets were specifically prohibited, as clothing became simpler and more practical. Yet, the idea that the body needed firm support was so deeply entrenched that corsets soon reappeared. In the early 1800s, the fashion was for wide-set breasts, which were achieved by a complex system of boning, invented by the corset-maker Leroy and known as "divorces." Other technical changes came to the corset: styles were woven without seams for greater smoothness; metal eyelets replaced the weaker embroidered ones; and "Instant Release" and "lazy lacing" systems of pulleys allowed women to lace and unlace themselves. Medical records note one fashionable young woman who died when three of her ribs actually pierced her liver. In the late 1800s, the crinoline vanished but the corset stayed, now accompanied by a bustle in back, for a distinctive S-shaped silhouette. The projecting "bustle" effect was first achieved with a horsehair pad, and then with a metal frame that meant a woman could only sit with the very tip of her bottom on the very edge of the chair. In the 1900s, the corset reached new heights. Models became more numerous and more specialized. There were corsets for morning (lightly boned), bathing at the seaside (unboned), horseback riding (elasticized at the hips), riding a velocipede (made of jersey), and much more. Some corsets came with their own perfumed sachet hanging in the center. Others were crafted of white satin, especially for wearing to a ball. As the century progressed, medical opinions became sharply divided on the corset. On the one hand were the doctors who saw the corset as an instrument of torture, deforming the body and internal organs. On the other hand, the majority still believed that corsets provided valuable support to the breasts, and kept the internal organs safely inside the body. By the end of the 19th century, women were so tightly corseted that they could not bend over. And the corset itself was hung with a combined system of garters and suspenders to hold up the stockings - a system as complicated, some said, as rigging a ship. The idea of the "artificial breast" was introduced. Designed to be worn in a corset, these were made of chamois leather, quilted satin, India rubber - one style could even be inflated at will! As the 20th century dawned, women continued to wear corsets - now lacing down to the knee - but the tide of public opinion was turning against them. Popular dancers Isadora Duncan and Loie Fuller reintroduced the ancient Greek idea of formless, free-flowing clothes - and no pinched waists. Couturier Madeleine Vionnet banished the corset and cut her dresses on the bias to provide more freedom of movement. And in 1913, a young woman names Mary Phelps Jacob invented a new type of bra - very soft, short, and designed to divide the breasts in a natural way. Eventually she sold her patent to the Warner Company, and the rest is history. World War I assured the end of the corset as an everyday undergarment. While the men were fighting at the front, women were on the homefront, laboring in factories, working in the fields. Corsets were abandoned in favor of a shorter and more pliable girdle, coupled with the modern bra. And as the Roaring Twenties swept in, American women led the way with their breast-minimizing bras, loose chemises, and other promoters of the new "flat chest." Technology continued to affect women's lingerie. One leader was Dunlop, better known today as a rubber tire manufacturer. In the 1930s, the Dunlop company invented a combination of latex rubber and ammonia that they called Lastex, an elastic yarn finer than any ever achieved. Lastex was woven into new stretchy support garments like the Roll-on, which simply slipped on the body like a sock. Lingerie manufacturers also began making their items to accommodate women's different shapes and sizes, for the first time offering better-fitting underwear in a greater range of sizes. Bras were developed with fitted cups, sizes A to D, and elastic straps, and variations were created with padded cups and underwires to enhance the breasts. In the 1950s, bras and girdles were used to exaggerate the feminine form, much as corsets had for centuries before. Missile-solo breasts were obtained by wearing constructed bras with circular top-stitching. Millionaire Howard Hughes even got into the act, when he designed an aerodynamic bra reinforced with wiring for Jane Russell, who played the female lead in his movie The Outlaw. Warner developed a "Merry Widow" in 1951, a combination of elasticized satin girdle and wired bra that was designed to go beneath evening wear. A backlash followed in the Sixties, as feminists set fire to their bras - a fiery symbol of their new emancipation. The fashion for going braless would result in many lingerie manufacturers going out of business. But the pendulum soon swung back, helped in large part by those women whose breasts were simply too big to be comfortable for long without a bra. By the 1980s, the rounded breast and well-padded bosom were back with a bang, and wired bras became number one in sales. Today, women are enticed by a dazzling array of lingerie styles, colors, and textures. If a woman wants to enhance her silhouette, she can easily do so, without having to endure the tortures of ages past. The new seamless support garments mold the figure gently but firmly, in revolutionary new blends of breathable fabric. Bras can be found with or without padding, and the new ultra-padded bras can create amazing cleavage effects for special occasions. Yet above all, lingerie today is fun. It's a personal pleasure, a way to pamper yourself and indulge your romantic nature. Enjoy. Ladies' lingerie and corsetry over the course of the last two centuries: Switching between the feminine and the boyish Setting aside the fig leaf of the Garden of Eden and the band or stay worn under the breasts of Greek ladies and starting with the different attempts to shape the body, often in agonising fashions, once they started to spread beyond the confines of life at court, the history of underwear as we know it could be said to begin in the middle of the 18th century. Although the origin of the camisole or vest lies further back in the past, what concerns us here is the origin of ladies' lingerie as we know it today, for which we can thank a firm like FELINA with its tradition reaching back over 100 years. Corset, crinoline and bustle are terms which affected women's lives between 1810 and 1870. Numerous documents from the first decades of the 19th century document a debate on the "wasp waist", which doctors disapproved of strongly, whereas fashion pundits of the day found it extremely attractive. A woman's body in the Biedermeier period - and a man's too, for that matter - had to look dainty and fragile. By 1828 laced corsets had already been replaced by the so-called "mechanical" corsets, which were manufactured with hammered-in metal eyelets. The crinoline - from the French "crin" = horsehair - was worn underneath outer garments and was used to support, with the help of whalebone and steel rods, the floor-length ladies' dresses, which could be up to 6 metres wide. Around 1870 this exaggerated silhouette "slipped" to the back and the basket-like bustle formed the "false buttocks", which were though to be particularly erotic. History Of Underwear Men and women have worn underwear for thousands of years, though its doubtful anybody today would be caught dead in some of the earliest models! Loincloths were originally outerwear, first worn by cave dwellers, then Egyptians and Romans, gradually becoming underwear along the way. Around the 13th Century, pull on underpants were invented and underwear became an important garment. Not only did underwear help shape the wearer's figure, it also kept their clean clothes from touching skin. In Europe the underwear evolution went into full swing - men started wearing corsets, cod pieces, stockings, long johns, undershirts and drawers. Women's underwear was also very elaborate and included hoop-skirts, corsets and bum rolls. Luckily for the ladies it simplified around the 1700s and 1800s to include garters, lace corsets, knickers, petticoats and stocking suspenders. The brassiere didn't appear until the early 1900s. Underwear has continued to change significantly this Century, helping create the shape and look for the outer clothes we wear. From the flattener bras of the 1920s, the layered petticoats of the 1950s, to the cleavage enhancing bras of the 1990s, underwear has played a big part in fashion trends. In recent decades, underwear has offered wearers far more variety and is designed for specific age groups and purposes. Holeproof makes a large range of underwear to suit all occasions including sport, casual, fashion, figure enhancement and warmth (thermals). Compiled by Umangi De Mel **** And now it's the One Piece Bra Triumph International introduced the one piece bra which is absolutely a technological marvel. It represents the ultimate achievement of a goal that has kept bra designers working overtime for decades: the complete elimination of the seams in the up and side panels. The result is a totally smooth, soft and seamless bra that is virtually invisible even when worn under tight, light tops and T-shirts. To teenagers embarking on their first mission in choosing a bra, Triumph has a range of pretty, cotton teenage styles in pastel shades that offer the perfect fit and confidence. To the fashion conscious, there's a variety ranging from half lace to full lace fashion bras, delightful maximizers with twin straps that offer the dream cleavage. T-shirt bras that give a smooth appearance under close fitting - outerwear and bridal bras with detachable straps. A range of supportive, full up bras are available for those who on basic comfort. Specialist bras for active women and maternity bras for new mums are also available. |
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Sexy lingerie, of course, may not be for
everyone. The most straight-laced of ultra-conservative men may not like
sexy lingerie. However, it would be hard to find a man on the planet who
doesn't have a very special appreciation for sexy, lacy, curvy, sensuous
sexy lingerie. The best about sexy lingerie is its brevity. For sexy
lingerie, less is more, to see. 
Women of today are enticed by a glittering array of lingerie styles,
colours, and textures. As foundationwear, lingerie is the starting point
upon which a woman designs her silhouette and develops her sense of
identity. These are her most intimate clothes, a special and often secret
manifestation of her mood worn from the bedroom to the office. 
