October 3, 2012 • 47 mins
In this episode, PopStuff co-host Holly Frey joins in to discuss undergarments through the ages, from the utilitarian shirt to the body-changing corset, split bloomers and more. We also talk about a recent discovery that's shaken up costume historians.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm
Sarah Dowdy and I'm joined by another special guest today.
This time it is Holly Fry, my fellow editor, and
(00:22):
you host your own podcast to you called pop Stuff,
and I'm get to be lucky and hang out with
you today. Yeah. So normally you're talking about TV and
movies and other pop culture kind of stuff, but Holly
is also a talented seamstress. You design clothes. You so
everything from wedding dresses to dragon con costumes to running
(00:46):
where that's appropriate for Disney Marathon. Fashion is a passion
for you. It is, indeed, it is indeed in historical
clothing in particular is very near and dear to my heart.
And I really like historical loathing too, So I was
really psyched when when I asked Holly if she wanted
to be on the show, and the first thing you
(01:07):
suggested was that we talked about underwear. So that's going
to be the topic for today. We're going to talk
about everything from the history of the undershirt to bloomers
and corsets. I know it is now October and so
y'all are probably expecting some Halloween stuff. We'll get to
that eventually, not today. Some of this will be scary,
(01:31):
no at least though, Holly is wearing a skeleton shirt today,
so so she is Halloween in spirit. And also it's
gonna help me. It's gonna help me visualize any conversations
we have about corsets and waste. You could get some
some pretty tightly thing if that were actually your torso
(01:52):
it's not. I have plenty of fluff right over it.
So I don't know where do you want to Where
do you want to start with us? I mean, I
was kind of thinking. One of the first personal emails
I ever say, not just a work related one, was
about Queen Victoria's underpan. Yeah, and then you didn't know
you were going to get me on my soapbar. I
just knew that this lady like costumes, she likes history.
(02:15):
I wasn't expecting the full blast of victoria underwear passion. Yeah. Well,
and I will say to set it up that I'm
also just a big fan of Queen Victoria, Like I'm
a dork, and I have her picture in my cube.
I carry a picture with me at all times. I
just have great admiration for her, UM because she was imperfect,
(02:36):
you know what I mean. She is lauded as such
an important um monarch, but she made a lot of
missteps and that kind of endears her to me. The
thing that really got me was this article that you
had pointed out about her bloomers, which had been UM.
It was actually like four years ago that they were discovered,
but it only recently really picked up steam in terms
(02:56):
of coverage, and they went up for sale just last year, right.
And the thing that got me is the article in
question talked about how it was evidence of how heavy
she had gotten in her later life, and she did
put on weight, she was like a million years old
at that point, UM. But what frustrated me is that
they they claimed that she had a fifty inch waist
(03:21):
five zero based on these bloomers, and that's not how
bloomers working. They were tight, they were, but in fact
bloomers were worn't cinched a great deal. You needed a
lot of fabric involved to make them bloom. Well, part
of part of it, and we're going to get a
(03:41):
little real for a minute, UM has to do with
their actual function, which is to protect your clothing from
your body oils and other general you know, human dirt.
You're very rich expensive. Um and if for anyone who
has ever worn Victorian style bloomers, it's eye opening the
first time because, um, there is a lot of fabric
(04:04):
there and you realize and we'll come back a little
bit too, the split crotch which they had, there's no
way to delicately put that, but so that um, large
amount of fabric kind of fills in so that even
though they're just split there, you're usually not exposed. If
you're standing up in the bloomers, you wouldn't see anything
(04:24):
because the fabric kind of gathers around and makes a wall,
a protective wall between you and your clothes. Um. So
they sort of seemed to make the assumption, as she
said that it would be filled out and there would
not be a sinched draw string involved. And I remember
you telling me that a year ago. And I looked
at so many articles leading up to this episode, and
almost all of them did assume that she had a
(04:46):
fifty inch waist. And I saw a lot of things
talking about her ascension dress that she would have worn
when she was eighteen, and she had a twenty two
inch waist because you know, it's a very fitted dress,
and saying she went from twenty two inches at fifty
she did fill out. And there are some rumors that
say she was morbidly obese, and you can even find
some um um kind of gossipy writings of the time
(05:10):
that alleged that she was up to sixty inches. But
I mean, if you do the math on them, and
we've seen picture woman like her small, Yeah, she was short.
I mean she was like five ft tall, so she
would have been bigger around at that point than tall.
And if you see pictures of like her jubilee towards
you know, the end of her life, she was stout.
(05:30):
She was not sixty inches of waste. But I mean,
I thought this was like a good place for for
us to start this discussion too, because it does show
how many misconceptions there are historical undergarment and how much
there is that that we don't know. That the average
person doesn't know, but even researchers, people who get into
(05:53):
all of this because it's not the it's not necessarily
the beautiful clothing that you keep, you put away, you
preserve a lot of what we have has kind of
come to us by chance almost, So we'll talk more
about that later, a really cool recent find that came
completely by chance. But we're just going to go over
a few of the basic underwear types today, and I
(06:17):
don't know, what do you think is a good one
to start on. Maybe the shirt, sure, since that's a
basic one and it's kind of the original. Ever, I mean,
there are loincloths that are you know, documented in very
early history. But there have been times when something covering
from the waist down in like a pant or underpant
type fashion, has fallen out of favor and back in
(06:39):
and back out and back in. But there's almost always
been an undershirt that was often quite long, and it's
some in some eras that served the purposes of both.
And we should say too, I mean, I'm interpreting a
real undergarment. A real undershirt is something that is a
thin type of material. It's not what you're necessarily going
to be wearing under cloak or other layers of clothing.
(07:01):
In might show some but it's primarily for keeping under
your other clothes, to keep you clean, to keep them clean,
to provide warmth, all those things that people still use
undergarment spoor today, and they were generally very very lightweight fabrics,
you know, the finest anyone could afford at the time
(07:22):
because most of the time there was a lot of
layered dressing involved and you want to minimize the bulk
as your layers build out my central heat. Yeah, it's
interesting that you mentioned them showing or not. I'm going
to diverge for a brief second. Do you know about
the big controversy with Marie in Twinett's wedding gown no idea?
Oh um, so in that era, completely not okay for
(07:47):
any of the undergarments to show, and when she showed
up for her wedding in France. Of course, anyone who
watched the movie m or have you done any reading,
it actually did take place though where she crossed the
board her from Austria France. She had to take off
everything she owned and leave it and then go into
France as a true air quotes French princess and um.
(08:10):
And at that point she was considered a princess because,
as many people know if you're a history buff, she
had already had a mock wedding with her brother as
a stand in for Louis Auguste, so that she was
technically where they send off their daughters. But somewhere along
the line, the measurements got messed up for her, or
(08:31):
there was an error on the dressmaker's plural because there
were many involved part and her wedding dress was too
small and her chemise was showing, and it was very scandalous,
and it was one of those things that kind of
kicked off the early stages of rumblings of distrust for her,
even though you know, her popularity waxed and waned a
little bit before it eventually really exploded into bad press everywhere.
(08:55):
That was very early on, like a big scandal that
one there going to She's acting like it's not even happening. Poor,
like fourteen year old girl, I know, just thrust into
this world of scandals. Well that's really interesting to hear too,
because we think of Marie Antoinetta is such a trend
setter too later on um that she started off her
(09:18):
public career essentially on, but you know, through through different
times sometimes having that undergarment, having the little sleeves or
the neck peek out was something that was okay. So
how did the shirt then shrink up to a shirt
length if we're thinking of it more as a tunic
(09:39):
sort of thing almost or a chemise. Well, I mean
even when you say shemis, I mean right up through
Victorian times it was still full length even under a
corset and with bloomers. In some cases there was also
a thing where called a combination you know what that is.
It's a bloomer and chemise combo burrito sort of thing.
(10:02):
They messed them together into one garment. So it's almost
like in concept it didn't look like this, but in
concept it worked similarly to a union suit where you
can step into it and button it down the front
and it looked like you were in like a little jumper. Um.
And that was again them in the mice bulk. But
that's really the first time that it kind of shrunk
up and became something else that I know of. How
(10:23):
about for men? What were what were they wearing after?
After men put tunics aside, they started wearing pants or
hose or whatever. What was happening with that long even
in um And since we were just talking about Myra intoine,
this is a great place to mention it, because it
was definitely happening then, Um, they had a long undershirt
(10:47):
that was serving as both there you know, top coverage
and their bottom coverage, even though they were wearing it
with pants. It was off and down to knee length,
and they would kind of fold it. The front was
a little bit shorter than the back. They would fold
the front up between their legs towards the back and
then pull the back forward and then pull their pants up,
and it was acting as their underwear and their T
(11:09):
shirt or the equivalent of what we would use a
T shirt for the day. That sounds that sounds like
a lot of bulk. And I'm thinking Holly and I
were looking at some pictures earlier today of of clothes
from what was about the eighteen thirties when men wore
very very slim pants, and I'm just imagining it was
(11:29):
not happening then at all. At that point they had
moved to we've gone to other types of undergarment. It
was like a union suit um which eventually kind of
shrunk up to look almost like a wrestling some shirt
lines in that. Oh yeah, well, the thing is again,
it's similar to what I was saying before about the
way bloomers were cut with a lot of fabric like,
(11:49):
when you see normally a gentleman from you know, the
the mid eighteenth century, you almost always see them in
a coat. There's a reason because there is a lot
of fabric at the back of their pants. There's a lot. Um.
If you watch any of the recent Payers of the
Caribbean movies, they actually really got this right because they
(12:12):
have a really phenomenal costume designer. Whether you like the
movies or not as separate issue, um, but when you
see them without them, you see like the big baggy
sack on the behind, and that's part of it is
that they were accommodating all that fabric and also, you
know they it allowed them freedom freedom of movement because
they could just kind of sit down and everything would
(12:32):
just spread around to kind of fill with spaces. Well,
freedom of movement is going to be sort of a
unique thing in this episode. That's probably a good segue
to course, it's because you are it is the exact
opposite a freedom of movement. Although you were telling me
earlier today that, of course it's can be kind of
(12:53):
liberating in that you don't have to do anything. It
is holding you upright, Yeah, I thought about just being
conscious of sitting up straight and how that takes so
much effort in and this probably speaks to my posture,
but eventually you start to get sort of tired even
but we're going to talk about sort of the more
extreme to where you're probably not thinking about how upright
(13:17):
you feel. You're maybe thinking more, I can't breathe and
I'm uncomfortable. Not necessarily how it started though, well, and
it's not how it was for most people. UM wellfit.
Of course it doesn't do that, it doesn't torture you.
And I think that's one of those things that um
history has been done a bit of a disservice by
(13:37):
modern film because it's always portrayed as this, I can't
breathe and it's like m the on the fainting couch,
and those things did happen, but those were like the
women that were doing that. We're almost like the equivalent
of like the Paris Hiltons of our day, like they
were the you know, breaking fashionistas, breaking your ankle in
(13:59):
in aiden cheels. Not everybody wears eight inch heels, right,
you might break your You're making foolish safety sacrifices for fashion.
And that was the same thing that was happening then
most people, most women were not walking around in a
corset that reduced their waist by four inches. They were
wearing a corset that was fitted and would provide support
(14:20):
to the bus line and smooth out the waist and
provide a good foundation for the very heavy clothes. And
I think something that that interests me once you get
beyond that idea that, of course it was just to
be laced as tightly as possible and make your waist
as tiny as possible. Once you get beyond that, you
can start really thinking about all of the shapes, and
(14:43):
that's really the goal of the course, to make your body,
whatever shape it might be, into the ideal shape at
the time, which is not always an hour glass shape.
The Torrian is our glass, but there of course it's
preceding that. We're much more like conical. Yeah, Clinical Regency
was very um like a cylinder. It was very up
(15:06):
and down, which is kind of funny when you think
about it, because Regency gowns, you know, they cut up
under the bust and then they were usually pretty loose
from there, but there was still often of courset going
on underneath. A lot of restriction was below, keeping you
very straight, and I think because we do associate the
courset so much with that with more like Victorian style gowns,
(15:27):
it's hard to believe at first that there were types.
Of course, it's in ancient Greece even um, not steel obviously,
if they were doing binding at that point to kind
of smooth out there their silhouette, and and even beyond
that into Italian medieval Gothic style dresses. Um, not the
(15:50):
really restricted coursets that we tend to think of, but
ones that would smoothe down enough for these very snug
fitting boxes that were were popular. But is it the
bath corset that's really the first one that's kind of
an iconic corset style what we might think of today.
They're the very restricted shape proably. Yeah. I don't want
(16:14):
to be definitive because I'm like I think so, but
I always worry, having not looked for that specific question,
that I will have missed something. But yeah, I mean
that's really where it started to be more of like
a full body, full containment hard you know, you're not
really your body has to do this, it has no
other option. If you're in steel is involved. Suddenly are
(16:36):
hard materials. I think that one in particular pop to
me because Catherine de Medici, who is a common subject
on this show, she was said to, UM, you know
really popularize that kind of steel corset, very rigid style. UM.
So I always like it when I can associate a name,
you know, like you just did with the Marie Antoinette story,
(16:59):
because helps me think, oh, I know what that looks
like now, because I've seen pictures of these women exactly,
and it's interesting. Um if you think about you know,
art history, any portrait that you see, um from there Elizabeth,
there're Brazilian great portraits of One of the keys to
(17:20):
think about is the bodice is always perfectly rigid, Like
when you see a painting of Queen Elizabeth. There's never
a wrinkle in the bodice. And that's part of why
this was going on. Why coursets we're getting a little
bit more rigid and more sort of confining, because they
had to make that perfect cone shape for that nice
sharp edge and then the pleasing folds of the skirt
(17:43):
that would fall out underneath it. Um, that was the style,
and the only way to get it was with the
corset underneath it, because without it you just kind of
look like a lumpy mission up into your d have
a spine that moves, and you create wrinkles in your dress. Yeah,
I mean, I um. If you ever want to see
an example of the problems that are created by not
having undergarments, I think if you go to like a
(18:04):
big convention or something. There are a lot of people now,
even at things like dragon Con and Comic Con, and
especially with steampunk having gotten so popular in terms of
making Victorian clothes more popular again, there are always people
that are maybe a little newer to costuming and they
don't realize they need the foundation garment and you can tell,
like you go, oh, something's not right there. The outfit
(18:25):
looks beautiful, but there they don't have the right undergarment.
And that's kind of a great quick lesson for the eye.
Like visually, oh, I see what happens with and without.
So if anybody's ever wondering troll around a convention and
look for the people in historical clothes that forgot to
make a course with, well, it's it's cool too. And
(18:46):
I can appreciate that you talked about the different silhouettes
that even thinking about silhouettes, where of course that doesn't
seem like an evident part of it, so sort of
like direct to our style, you know, so post French Revolution,
dramatic change in clothes. Stop thinking about Marie Antoinette, start
thinking about Empress Josephine or someone. But there's still structural
(19:10):
garments underneath there. It's not just a willy nilly world.
Although Marie Antoinette was kind of a forebear of it
was with her her time at night. I was like,
I don't want to do with this stuff anymore. Um.
And there were a lot of scandalous things written about her,
how she didn't wear a corset and also asserting her
(19:31):
sexual promiscuity as being evidenced by the fact that she
didn't want to wear a corset at her private quarters,
and um, you know, it's a fascinating thing. But even so,
there was always a chemise under there, and always something
always again, because they did not have modern washing machines,
those fabrics were expensive and very fine, like even a
(19:53):
lot of the time on a chemise that was very
well appointed with beautiful trim. The trim was usually just
based it into lace, and the servants would actually unstitch
it from it so they could give the undergarment, a
good hard wash and then put that delicate lace back
on without damaging it. Like there was always stuff always
had to get moved around. It's good to hear, Holly,
(20:13):
that makes me feel better about the cleanliness of people
in the past. Well, then you hear you know other
tales of gentlemen that would wear their same union suit
all winter long and only take it off in the
spring to wash. We've done enough Arctic exploration episodes have
the full picture of wearing the union suit all winter.
(20:35):
But we've got to talk about the debate over courses
that too, because we've sort of been covering the era
where h the really extreme corseted figures might go in
and out of style, but there's always something there. But
eventually in sort of the second half of the nineteenth
century when it starts to become something that people get
really up in arms about, or even before that or
(20:58):
some There are a lot of political cartoons from um
colonial era that are about women foolishly, you know, jostling
themselves into the tiniest possible thing. There are some really
funny ones with very robust sized women trying to get
really thin down and they have the big giant Marian
twinette do on. Yeah, historical political cartoons are some funny,
(21:21):
funny business about fashion are really really funny. I saw
some a woman wearing a large crinoline and criticizing her
maid for looking like a fool for wearing a much
smaller one. All sorts of things like that, little snarky
old cartoons are amusing. Yeah, so there were I mean
there were people doing that even then, um, that were
(21:44):
tight lacing and being criticized for it. It's like, don't
you know your place, Like, please stop trying to be
something you're not. Um. And there were doctors going all
the way back that were like, I don't think this
is a good idea, but really, how than hygiene reformers,
clergy even saying that this was not a good thing
(22:05):
or this is a good thing. Uh, feminists of course,
and um, part of this seems like just because of
coursetting did get so extreme during this time with the
lost places Gibson girl. Yeah, that's really like there was
a transition from the hour glass of Victorian era and
even within without bustle, that hour glass kind of stayed
(22:26):
in place for quite a long time. Um. If you
look at course it's from you know, early pre Civil
War part of the eighteen hundreds right up through the
you know, nine hundred nineteen o one. They have pretty
much the same shape. There's some variation, but it's always
the hour last shape. But then something happened and it
became more about thrusting the bust forward and the rear
(22:49):
end back. And I think that's got so extreme that
that's where the kind of debate over it really hit
a fever pitch, because it starts to look clearly uncomfortable
and and like it might even have some long term Yeah.
I mean that was really Um, there started to really
(23:09):
be a commonality of women having health issues cracking ribs.
I mean for your underwear. That doesn't make any sense,
Like could you imagine now an any lady, you get
up and you put on a brawn it correct your ribs,
Like that just doesn't happen. That that sounds to think
(23:30):
about time for a new style. That's happening, And I
mean that that's that was a result. Style started to
change in a more natural form started to arise, and
that that started to become more popular and um, of
course it's really freaked out. Of course it manufacturers what
are we gonna do? We've been putting women in course
(23:51):
it's for ever, what are we going to do now?
I read a really interesting article about the corset Manufacturers
Light which wasn't really actually as much of a polite
as you might expect um in the Journal of Social
History by Jill Fields and um. She wrote that the
course that saleswoman became really important. You needed to be
(24:15):
a specialist. And you talked about this earlier that people
who say, of course it is automatically uncomfortable, they're in
the wrong one. Um. So that became an important aspect
of it. You had to have the right fit. It
wasn't just here's your measurement, here's the waste you're going for.
But also it became something that wasn't just about style
(24:36):
and dress. It became a discussion about science and modernity
and even race and really kind of icky ways, um,
and and just clasps and and things like that, the
uncorseted figure being slovenly um. But sometimes experts were even
drawn into this discussion. And the one that just really
(24:59):
blew my mind was this guy have luck Ellis, who
was cited by the Corset Manufacturers Association as claiming that
women had to be corseted because the evolution from a
horizontal to vertical position had been so much harder on women.
And he even said, quote, the corset is morphologically essential.
(25:22):
So this just made me think like boneless bags of
organs or something that could be our segue to the
Halloween discussion. But I just thought that was so strange
that instead of seeing this clear potential for other forms
of structural garments that you could sell, which is of
(25:44):
course what they eventually came to that realization. Instead you
you would think, no, you really have to be in
a corset, or you'll just collapse into a wicked witch
puddle or just pile. Yeah, exactly. But but of course,
you know, as styles changed of courset, manufacturers did realize
that there were other things they could sell. You could
(26:05):
sell dance course it that's my favorite, sport courses. You
have women playing organized sports that there are women's colleges,
You have things like tennis and bicycling. You have tango parties,
and you can't wear that really rigid corset if you're
in a tango or play tennis. You need a specialized product. Yeah,
(26:29):
and and eventually just the whole silhouette really changes to
UM in the in the teens, the debutante slouch. That
might be my favorite thing I learned in this episode,
just adopting this entirely new posture. Whereas you talk about
Queen Elizabeth portraits of her, she's so upright, and that
(26:49):
had sort of been a standard for a very long time,
the new posture being one where you thrust your abdomen
out to partly minimize your bust, And it was just
it must have been so strange looking now are used
to people with all different sorts of postures, good and bad.
It must have been so strange though in this time,
especially with older women probably still maintaining a lot of
(27:12):
the more traditional styles and postures. Oh yeah, and especially
I mean part of that is born to the fact
that UM textiles and designers approaches to textile started to
change so much that they were starting to cut garments
on the bias because it could be made so much
faster thanks to the Industrial Revolution, that they could play
with how fabric draped a little bit more, And that's
(27:33):
actually considered kind of a I don't want to stay wasteful,
but that's the word keeps coming to mind. It's almost
a wasteful way to cut a garment um. Normally you
would cut along the grain the warp or weft of it,
which are the perpendicular threads that run to one another,
and then you started cutting along the diagonal between them,
and it has this beautiful drape, but you burn through
(27:54):
fabric a lot faster. And so because you know, prior
to the big crash and twenty there was a lot
of opulence and there was a lot of like, we
can indulge ourselves with beautiful fabrics, let's cut it on
the bias um. And then of course it's weren't working
because they would show underneath that cut because it does
cling to the body and it kind of drapes, and
(28:16):
if the beauty of it is the draping, I imagine
you want the rigidity under was not looking so well.
I will not be shipping Bloomers. I don't have any
Bloomers to ship anywhere. You would want to keep the
Bloomers for yourself. I just imagine, because I think of
all of these underwear types we've discussed, Bloomers might be
(28:36):
sort of the most fun. Well, they're very personal, they're
they're just I mean I'm imagining, like baby bloomers, that
sort of thing. We're going to get into more of
the the details though, Yeah, it's very real. They're not
always the puffy baby pants I'm imagining. I mean, they
(28:58):
often were adorned with cute trim. But you know, it's
one of those interesting things. Um, if you've ever talked
about the Mulan Rouge and can Can dancers, you know
people always talk about how they were a little loose, uh,
sexually because they would dance and show off their split underwear. Okay,
everybody was wearing split underwear. And here's why. Let me
(29:20):
just take you for a lockdown learning lane. You may
not have wanted, um, if you are wearing bloomers which
go under your corsets and the chemise and then your
corset over it, there is no way to pull those
bloomers down without undoing everything, taking off all your clothes, etceteratcha.
So they were split, um, almost all the way that
(29:41):
entire scene that runs, you know, from your belly button
to the small of your back, between your legs, your
crop seam was almost open all the way in some cases,
so almost two pant legs with a lace right with
a draw string. Sometimes they weren't even joined well, and
again I'm going to go back to all of that fabric.
Allow was you when you were in the outhouse to
(30:03):
kind of pull those pant legs apart up around you
and then you could sit on the toilet and take
care of business. So a practical, practically practical. Yeah, if
you could call that practical by modern standards, it seems
woefully impractical, But that was it's it's practical reason. That's
why the underpants were split. They weren't split in and
so that they could show them all because can can.
(30:25):
They were just that was the only way to make
it all work and like live your life in a
semi normal It's kind of the disturbing note now to
apply that to can can cancer. I don't know. Hopefully
they were at least breaking out a pair of special
bloomers just for the can Can. You know. I think
it depends on where you were watching what yah which shift?
(30:47):
Probably um so bloomers you want to move back on
up to the brazier. Yeah, although we should talk about
the bloomer trend. You found fascinating that we talked about
a little before. They're fake and I think this is
maybe what I think is kind of cute. So i'm
(31:09):
i'm I'm identifying with the cute baby bloomers and then
the pantiles because they're just they're so strange, so fun. Yeah.
So they apparently appeared in fashion magazines as early as
eighteen o five, but didn't really catch on for a while.
People must have just seen them because they do look.
It's a bizarre look, um, And I can imagine women
(31:33):
in eighteen o five with these radically new silhouettes already
being like, okay, and now I'm supposed to wear pantal lips. Um.
But they did eventually catch on, although they finally became
something that just little girls would wear. But these are
little pants that would peep out from under your dress,
(31:56):
so not the floor sweeping dresses anymore, ones that about
ankle length or so. So you would have pants, very
pretty fatten ones, ones with lace peeping out from underneath.
And what I find so bizarre is that eventually it
got to the point where you might not want to
(32:16):
wear that, but you liked the look, so you would
wear false pantlets, which were I have to imagine just
leg warmer with tapes attaching them up. To your your waist,
whatever other garments you have going on up there. Um.
Polly and I were speaking earlier about dickies, you know,
(32:37):
false fronts for false turtlenecks, false cancels, things like that
basically away to look like you're wearing an undershirt that
you're not really wearing. And I can I can see
that I've never worn one of those myself. I don't
have any false turtlenecks, but I can see the appeal
(33:00):
for something like that. You want to layered, look, you
want to but not mess with old stuff. I can't
really get my mind around false pantalot because it doesn't
seem like it would be any more convenient. It seems
like having these weird tapes going over most of your
legs and then leg warmers, things would get twisted and uncomfortable.
(33:20):
We've already talked about the split bloomers and all the
fabric there and how awkward that is, especially with a
crinol um. It's just more Fabrican weirdness, whereas it seems
like just a pair I'm imagining comfy PJ loose pants
that you wear under your dress. Seems so simple. Maybe
we should bring it back I doubled dog there you
(33:41):
all do it if you do it in here with it?
I mean, can I wear leggings under that? So that
counts alright. Final topic is this. If we weren't talking
about this now, I think Dieplena and I would be
talking about it in our amazing twenty twelve Discoveries in History.
Even though it's not technically discovery, they had to date
(34:06):
and be very careful with their data. Yeah, so we
are talking about the oldest bra in the world, or
what's believed to be the oldest bra. So um previous
assumptions up until now, or that men wore these shirts
that we've discussed, women wore sms course at whatever other
(34:26):
sort of garments. But there wasn't a braw like what
we think of as a brawl, and we should we
should give some some detail to that because bandeaux styles
were also worn in ancient Greece, so we're not talking
about a brawl like that. A bra has to be
two distinct cups right to count, not not like an undershirt,
(34:47):
not like a camusele shirt, but an actual structured garment
with seeming that creates, as you said, the cups for
each of your breaths exactly. That's a weird thing here.
So in two thousand eight, UM there was a very
interesting discovery in East Tyrol, Austria, in Langberg Castle, which
(35:08):
was built I think they're guessing around eleven ninety or so,
but the castle had been pretty extensively remodeled in the
fifteenth century and during some two thousand eight works and
two thousand eight renovations, this vault of trash was discovered.
And I love things like this because it gives you
a peek at everyday life rather than the things that
(35:31):
people have preserved for whatever reason. This is a vault
of trash. It's filled with things like wood, textiles, scraps, yeah,
all the stuff that nobody would have really cared about. Um.
But because of the conditions in this vault, all of
it is really well preserved. So two thousand, seven hundred
textile fragments were found. According to the great Smithsonian blog Threaded,
(35:55):
which is lots of fun for fashion history, UM and
um hung those fragments were four brash, Yeah, and it
is fascinating because this, you know, the fifteenth century is
one of those times when most costume historians are at
best taking a wild stab at at the layering that
(36:16):
may or may not have been going on. We know
their clothes were very tight, and a lot of people
have just assumed along the way that just the tightness
of the clothes was kind of covering all of the
bases of keeping everything in place, because I mean it
went all the way down to the arms, like, um,
if you see any modern um films or anything about
(36:36):
that are what people often remark is that the the
bodices and the arms are all very form fitted and tight,
and like, how would you move not so much? Um.
This kind of turns that whole concept on its head,
it really does. And and they're different style bras too,
so it's like you got a little selection from the
department store on us. It's not just one cut. There
(36:59):
two that look kind of like this contraption that's occasionally
referenced from this period called breast bags, and it's kind
of like a halter top like today's standards. So I
was I was talking to Holly about breast bags and
and thinking that they sounded really awkward. Somebody wanted to
(37:20):
talk to me about that, and you did say, it's
basically like a halter top. So two of them kind
of like that. Apparently those could be used for various
uh silhouettes that you were going for, whether to minimize
or enhance. I feel kind of weird saying that on
the podcast a little late, but they do essentially just
look like supportive halter shirt. Almost the third looks like
(37:46):
a modern brawl it's got straps and cups in a backband,
and then the fourth looks like a fifties style braw
one that extends low on the rib cage um, I
guess for some extra support. But the really well thing
about all of this is they're they're pretty. I mean,
if you look at the picture of a of the
one that they're really showing off, it does look like
(38:08):
a bra. But as much as it has been destroyed
over the years, it's pretty, you know, but there was
it has details on it. It's not just this um
utilitarian garment. Well, and there has been some discussion about
whether or not about the its actual use, whether it
(38:30):
was a functional foundation garment or if it was more
of a boudoir garment, which brings up a whole nest
of other questions of like you never think about, you know,
kind of that sort of tittilating approach to fashion going
on so much in that era, even though I'm sure
it must have been on some level. I meant everyone
has wanted to police a partner at some point in
(38:51):
time since history began. Um. But yeah, so there is
a lot of debate over the actual um purpose of
that garment and why would they make it so well,
we make pretty undergarments that no one has ever meant
to see or at most, you know, our closest family members.
So it's kind of fascinating from that perspective, it is,
And um, it's just a little a little peek into
(39:15):
fashion from hundreds of years ago, and also such an
eye open ur two for for folks who assumed that
the bra is something that didn't develop until way way
after this, that the bral had to have come after
the corset. Yeah, And I mean it's if you look
it up online or even in many books. The history
(39:36):
of the bra usually starts in en when Mary Phelps Jacob,
who is a socialite who found that those bias cut
garments that I was talking about earlier, her corset messed
up the line of it, like you could see the
bones sticking out, and she didn't find it pleasing and
that she and her maid concocted what was the first
bra out of two handkerchiefs and some ribbon. I have
(39:57):
some series. We actually did a broad episode it on
Pop Stuff, and I kind of went off on my
I bet the servant did all the work, she took
all the credit. I don't. She was probably a lovely girl.
But that's where we normally mark the start of the
modern brazier, because even though there were various forms, that
was the first one that was patented, and then she
(40:17):
sold that patent and it took off as an industry. Well,
and um, we had been I think a listener had
recommended this article, this BBC history article where this news
came out about the bra fine too, to our podcast
and then also to mom Stuff because clearly they're going
to be interested in this news too. And I forwarded
(40:40):
the article onto y'all are just gonna think I sent
Holly all underwear article, any any historical underwear. But I
did something I'm fascinated with which you knew I did,
so I forwarded onto you and I remember your response
to that too, And it was at first, you know,
I saw the subject line and I was just ready
to dismiss that. I was thinking, Oh, surely will be
(41:00):
some modified corset or band do, and You're like, it
really looks this looks like a bra um So I
think everybody might need to go check out that picture now.
It is. It's very eye opening because it looks exactly
like a bra you would buy now that went through
the dryer, like exactly, and then you're dog chewed on
(41:22):
it a little bit. That's how you could recreate your
own historical garment. Historical garment. Yeah, it's so fascinating, and
you know the I'm always fascinated by all of this
from both the fashion standpoint and the development and evolution
of fashion. I mean, there's so many things we could
still talk about because I'm such an information junkie about it.
(41:43):
But I just think sociologically, it's really fascinating how people
have treated their bodies through time in the interest of fashion. Yeah,
and I think people deciding to accept or reject fashions
that are either clearly uncomfortable or weird is really neat too.
(42:05):
So so um the idea that women would accept the
s shaped course it, you know, the epitome of beauty,
but then against it too. Eventually, I'm not going to
wear something like that anymore. And and you really do
get into that more in the teens and twenties. Um,
but then it goes back to with Christian Dior's new look.
(42:28):
I mean, we've got to at least mention that for
a second, sort of a return to a course that
it look and a lot of women really didn't like
that that that was the direction style was heading back.
And there were protests over over that look, but also
a mass exception or acceptance of it rather too. Um,
(42:49):
something so different from the box the war rationing styles
that had that had come immediately before. So what fashions
were what one still when people decide to accept it,
When they see those pantalets in eighteen o five and
are like, I cannot imagine wearing those, but then their
daughters wear them a generation later, it's really neat to
(43:11):
me to think about all that. Yeah, And I mean,
of course it's are so fascinating, I think to people
today because people still wear them. I mean they're fetishized
in some cases, but also just as a fashion garment,
they've moved outside there and I mean they are Bible
parties that are impeautifully you know, made corsets, and that's
sort of how I became fascinated with them, was seeing
(43:32):
like these really beautiful, fascinating costume pieces and going, oh,
that's really where I should learn how to make those.
And that's how I ended up down the rabbit hole
of like having this ridiculous library of books about the
history of corse of tree and how it's evolved. And
I just, uh, there's a reason we're fascinated with underwear.
I'm not sure what that reason is even, but of
(43:53):
course it's I think in particular, really strike accord with
people because one, they tend to be divisive. Um, you
either go oh yes or that it's crazy, and there's
not a lot of in between. And two, I mean
there's just something fascinating about kind of taking control of
your shape in that way that draws people into it.
And we didn't even get into tight lasers. Really like
(44:16):
the people that really do body modification through prolonged use
of courser try um, which is a fascinating world in
and of itself. Um yeah, it's like the one garment
that just makes people. Yeah, the undershirt is not. It
doesn't have that same like, oh, chamiss, tell me all
about them. We gotta incorporate those in outward fashion. Uh yeah, alright, well,
(44:41):
I'm gonna make bloomers come back. You and me both
are gonna start wearing them underdress pantal lets all the way. Yeah,
pantal let's all right, Holly, let's make this happen. You
don't angle that carrot, I will hold you to. I'm
gonna come into work in a couple of weeks and
there will be like a neatly folded parapet on my
on my desk. I'm not sure what length dresses I
(45:05):
would even have to wear with pantal it, so I'd
have to get out my old prom dress or something
just below the knee for pantalt that might look like
I was living in the Oneida Commune or something. We're
not going to go full length bo peep. We're going
to go calf length on the pantolets, just to loving
the on the dress. We're gonna post pictures. Oh my god. Okay,
(45:31):
well we'll all look forward to that, to the new
fashion trends, new new historic. UM. So, if you guys
want to share any other details about probably historical underwear
or historic inspired underwear, um, let us know. We are
at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on
(45:52):
Twitter at Miston History, and we are on Facebook. And
I know that so many of our listeners so and
a lot of you guys are actually heard from costumers
UM doing theatrical costume and cosplay stuff. And I really
hope that you guys enjoyed this especially and and share
some of your own stories about UM trying to get
(46:15):
that right look that Holly is talking about. You can't
just wear the dress. You've gotta have start from the
inside out exactly. So UM, I don't know do we
have any cool fashion related articles. We actually have an
article on how course It's worked? Perfect, Okay, cool, breezy.
It doesn't get into all of the stuff that we
got into here, but it covers all the basic points
(46:37):
and you should absolutely check that out. Yeah, you can
do that by searching for how Course It's Work on
our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com. I wasn't able lay that.
(47:03):
I wasn't able La
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, welcome to the podcast. I'm
Sarah Dowdy and I'm joined by another special guest today.
This time it is Holly Fry, my fellow editor, and
(00:22):
you host your own podcast to you called pop Stuff,
and I'm get to be lucky and hang out with
you today. Yeah. So normally you're talking about TV and
movies and other pop culture kind of stuff, but Holly
is also a talented seamstress. You design clothes. You so
everything from wedding dresses to dragon con costumes to running
(00:46):
where that's appropriate for Disney Marathon. Fashion is a passion
for you. It is, indeed, it is indeed in historical
clothing in particular is very near and dear to my heart.
And I really like historical loathing too, So I was
really psyched when when I asked Holly if she wanted
to be on the show, and the first thing you
(01:07):
suggested was that we talked about underwear. So that's going
to be the topic for today. We're going to talk
about everything from the history of the undershirt to bloomers
and corsets. I know it is now October and so
y'all are probably expecting some Halloween stuff. We'll get to
that eventually, not today. Some of this will be scary,
(01:31):
no at least though, Holly is wearing a skeleton shirt today,
so so she is Halloween in spirit. And also it's
gonna help me. It's gonna help me visualize any conversations
we have about corsets and waste. You could get some
some pretty tightly thing if that were actually your torso
(01:52):
it's not. I have plenty of fluff right over it.
So I don't know where do you want to Where
do you want to start with us? I mean, I
was kind of thinking. One of the first personal emails
I ever say, not just a work related one, was
about Queen Victoria's underpan. Yeah, and then you didn't know
you were going to get me on my soapbar. I
just knew that this lady like costumes, she likes history.
(02:15):
I wasn't expecting the full blast of victoria underwear passion. Yeah. Well,
and I will say to set it up that I'm
also just a big fan of Queen Victoria, Like I'm
a dork, and I have her picture in my cube.
I carry a picture with me at all times. I
just have great admiration for her, UM because she was imperfect,
(02:36):
you know what I mean. She is lauded as such
an important um monarch, but she made a lot of
missteps and that kind of endears her to me. The
thing that really got me was this article that you
had pointed out about her bloomers, which had been UM.
It was actually like four years ago that they were discovered,
but it only recently really picked up steam in terms
(02:56):
of coverage, and they went up for sale just last year, right.
And the thing that got me is the article in
question talked about how it was evidence of how heavy
she had gotten in her later life, and she did
put on weight, she was like a million years old
at that point, UM. But what frustrated me is that
they they claimed that she had a fifty inch waist
(03:21):
five zero based on these bloomers, and that's not how
bloomers working. They were tight, they were, but in fact
bloomers were worn't cinched a great deal. You needed a
lot of fabric involved to make them bloom. Well, part
of part of it, and we're going to get a
(03:41):
little real for a minute, UM has to do with
their actual function, which is to protect your clothing from
your body oils and other general you know, human dirt.
You're very rich expensive. Um and if for anyone who
has ever worn Victorian style bloomers, it's eye opening the
first time because, um, there is a lot of fabric
(04:04):
there and you realize and we'll come back a little
bit too, the split crotch which they had, there's no
way to delicately put that, but so that um, large
amount of fabric kind of fills in so that even
though they're just split there, you're usually not exposed. If
you're standing up in the bloomers, you wouldn't see anything
(04:24):
because the fabric kind of gathers around and makes a wall,
a protective wall between you and your clothes. Um. So
they sort of seemed to make the assumption, as she
said that it would be filled out and there would
not be a sinched draw string involved. And I remember
you telling me that a year ago. And I looked
at so many articles leading up to this episode, and
almost all of them did assume that she had a
(04:46):
fifty inch waist. And I saw a lot of things
talking about her ascension dress that she would have worn
when she was eighteen, and she had a twenty two
inch waist because you know, it's a very fitted dress,
and saying she went from twenty two inches at fifty
she did fill out. And there are some rumors that
say she was morbidly obese, and you can even find
some um um kind of gossipy writings of the time
(05:10):
that alleged that she was up to sixty inches. But
I mean, if you do the math on them, and
we've seen picture woman like her small, Yeah, she was short.
I mean she was like five ft tall, so she
would have been bigger around at that point than tall.
And if you see pictures of like her jubilee towards
you know, the end of her life, she was stout.
(05:30):
She was not sixty inches of waste. But I mean,
I thought this was like a good place for for
us to start this discussion too, because it does show
how many misconceptions there are historical undergarment and how much
there is that that we don't know. That the average
person doesn't know, but even researchers, people who get into
(05:53):
all of this because it's not the it's not necessarily
the beautiful clothing that you keep, you put away, you
preserve a lot of what we have has kind of
come to us by chance almost, So we'll talk more
about that later, a really cool recent find that came
completely by chance. But we're just going to go over
a few of the basic underwear types today, and I
(06:17):
don't know, what do you think is a good one
to start on. Maybe the shirt, sure, since that's a
basic one and it's kind of the original. Ever, I mean,
there are loincloths that are you know, documented in very
early history. But there have been times when something covering
from the waist down in like a pant or underpant
type fashion, has fallen out of favor and back in
(06:39):
and back out and back in. But there's almost always
been an undershirt that was often quite long, and it's
some in some eras that served the purposes of both.
And we should say too, I mean, I'm interpreting a
real undergarment. A real undershirt is something that is a
thin type of material. It's not what you're necessarily going
to be wearing under cloak or other layers of clothing.
(07:01):
In might show some but it's primarily for keeping under
your other clothes, to keep you clean, to keep them clean,
to provide warmth, all those things that people still use
undergarment spoor today, and they were generally very very lightweight fabrics,
you know, the finest anyone could afford at the time
(07:22):
because most of the time there was a lot of
layered dressing involved and you want to minimize the bulk
as your layers build out my central heat. Yeah, it's
interesting that you mentioned them showing or not. I'm going
to diverge for a brief second. Do you know about
the big controversy with Marie in Twinett's wedding gown no idea?
Oh um, so in that era, completely not okay for
(07:47):
any of the undergarments to show, and when she showed
up for her wedding in France. Of course, anyone who
watched the movie m or have you done any reading,
it actually did take place though where she crossed the
board her from Austria France. She had to take off
everything she owned and leave it and then go into
France as a true air quotes French princess and um.
(08:10):
And at that point she was considered a princess because,
as many people know if you're a history buff, she
had already had a mock wedding with her brother as
a stand in for Louis Auguste, so that she was
technically where they send off their daughters. But somewhere along
the line, the measurements got messed up for her, or
(08:31):
there was an error on the dressmaker's plural because there
were many involved part and her wedding dress was too
small and her chemise was showing, and it was very scandalous,
and it was one of those things that kind of
kicked off the early stages of rumblings of distrust for her,
even though you know, her popularity waxed and waned a
little bit before it eventually really exploded into bad press everywhere.
(08:55):
That was very early on, like a big scandal that
one there going to She's acting like it's not even happening. Poor,
like fourteen year old girl, I know, just thrust into
this world of scandals. Well that's really interesting to hear too,
because we think of Marie Antoinetta is such a trend
setter too later on um that she started off her
(09:18):
public career essentially on, but you know, through through different
times sometimes having that undergarment, having the little sleeves or
the neck peek out was something that was okay. So
how did the shirt then shrink up to a shirt
length if we're thinking of it more as a tunic
(09:39):
sort of thing almost or a chemise. Well, I mean
even when you say shemis, I mean right up through
Victorian times it was still full length even under a
corset and with bloomers. In some cases there was also
a thing where called a combination you know what that is.
It's a bloomer and chemise combo burrito sort of thing.
(10:02):
They messed them together into one garment. So it's almost
like in concept it didn't look like this, but in
concept it worked similarly to a union suit where you
can step into it and button it down the front
and it looked like you were in like a little jumper. Um.
And that was again them in the mice bulk. But
that's really the first time that it kind of shrunk
up and became something else that I know of. How
(10:23):
about for men? What were what were they wearing after?
After men put tunics aside, they started wearing pants or
hose or whatever. What was happening with that long even
in um And since we were just talking about Myra intoine,
this is a great place to mention it, because it
was definitely happening then, Um, they had a long undershirt
(10:47):
that was serving as both there you know, top coverage
and their bottom coverage, even though they were wearing it
with pants. It was off and down to knee length,
and they would kind of fold it. The front was
a little bit shorter than the back. They would fold
the front up between their legs towards the back and
then pull the back forward and then pull their pants up,
and it was acting as their underwear and their T
(11:09):
shirt or the equivalent of what we would use a
T shirt for the day. That sounds that sounds like
a lot of bulk. And I'm thinking Holly and I
were looking at some pictures earlier today of of clothes
from what was about the eighteen thirties when men wore
very very slim pants, and I'm just imagining it was
(11:29):
not happening then at all. At that point they had
moved to we've gone to other types of undergarment. It
was like a union suit um which eventually kind of
shrunk up to look almost like a wrestling some shirt
lines in that. Oh yeah, well, the thing is again,
it's similar to what I was saying before about the
way bloomers were cut with a lot of fabric like,
(11:49):
when you see normally a gentleman from you know, the
the mid eighteenth century, you almost always see them in
a coat. There's a reason because there is a lot
of fabric at the back of their pants. There's a lot. Um.
If you watch any of the recent Payers of the
Caribbean movies, they actually really got this right because they
(12:12):
have a really phenomenal costume designer. Whether you like the
movies or not as separate issue, um, but when you
see them without them, you see like the big baggy
sack on the behind, and that's part of it is
that they were accommodating all that fabric and also, you
know they it allowed them freedom freedom of movement because
they could just kind of sit down and everything would
(12:32):
just spread around to kind of fill with spaces. Well,
freedom of movement is going to be sort of a
unique thing in this episode. That's probably a good segue
to course, it's because you are it is the exact
opposite a freedom of movement. Although you were telling me
earlier today that, of course it's can be kind of
(12:53):
liberating in that you don't have to do anything. It
is holding you upright, Yeah, I thought about just being
conscious of sitting up straight and how that takes so
much effort in and this probably speaks to my posture,
but eventually you start to get sort of tired even
but we're going to talk about sort of the more
extreme to where you're probably not thinking about how upright
(13:17):
you feel. You're maybe thinking more, I can't breathe and
I'm uncomfortable. Not necessarily how it started though, well, and
it's not how it was for most people. UM wellfit.
Of course it doesn't do that, it doesn't torture you.
And I think that's one of those things that um
history has been done a bit of a disservice by
(13:37):
modern film because it's always portrayed as this, I can't
breathe and it's like m the on the fainting couch,
and those things did happen, but those were like the
women that were doing that. We're almost like the equivalent
of like the Paris Hiltons of our day, like they
were the you know, breaking fashionistas, breaking your ankle in
(13:59):
in aiden cheels. Not everybody wears eight inch heels, right,
you might break your You're making foolish safety sacrifices for fashion.
And that was the same thing that was happening then
most people, most women were not walking around in a
corset that reduced their waist by four inches. They were
wearing a corset that was fitted and would provide support
(14:20):
to the bus line and smooth out the waist and
provide a good foundation for the very heavy clothes. And
I think something that that interests me once you get
beyond that idea that, of course it was just to
be laced as tightly as possible and make your waist
as tiny as possible. Once you get beyond that, you
can start really thinking about all of the shapes, and
(14:43):
that's really the goal of the course, to make your body,
whatever shape it might be, into the ideal shape at
the time, which is not always an hour glass shape.
The Torrian is our glass, but there of course it's
preceding that. We're much more like conical. Yeah, Clinical Regency
was very um like a cylinder. It was very up
(15:06):
and down, which is kind of funny when you think
about it, because Regency gowns, you know, they cut up
under the bust and then they were usually pretty loose
from there, but there was still often of courset going
on underneath. A lot of restriction was below, keeping you
very straight, and I think because we do associate the
courset so much with that with more like Victorian style gowns,
(15:27):
it's hard to believe at first that there were types.
Of course, it's in ancient Greece even um, not steel obviously,
if they were doing binding at that point to kind
of smooth out there their silhouette, and and even beyond
that into Italian medieval Gothic style dresses. Um, not the
(15:50):
really restricted coursets that we tend to think of, but
ones that would smoothe down enough for these very snug
fitting boxes that were were popular. But is it the
bath corset that's really the first one that's kind of
an iconic corset style what we might think of today.
They're the very restricted shape proably. Yeah. I don't want
(16:14):
to be definitive because I'm like I think so, but
I always worry, having not looked for that specific question,
that I will have missed something. But yeah, I mean
that's really where it started to be more of like
a full body, full containment hard you know, you're not
really your body has to do this, it has no
other option. If you're in steel is involved. Suddenly are
(16:36):
hard materials. I think that one in particular pop to
me because Catherine de Medici, who is a common subject
on this show, she was said to, UM, you know
really popularize that kind of steel corset, very rigid style. UM.
So I always like it when I can associate a name,
you know, like you just did with the Marie Antoinette story,
(16:59):
because helps me think, oh, I know what that looks
like now, because I've seen pictures of these women exactly,
and it's interesting. Um if you think about you know,
art history, any portrait that you see, um from there Elizabeth,
there're Brazilian great portraits of One of the keys to
(17:20):
think about is the bodice is always perfectly rigid, Like
when you see a painting of Queen Elizabeth. There's never
a wrinkle in the bodice. And that's part of why
this was going on. Why coursets we're getting a little
bit more rigid and more sort of confining, because they
had to make that perfect cone shape for that nice
sharp edge and then the pleasing folds of the skirt
(17:43):
that would fall out underneath it. Um, that was the style,
and the only way to get it was with the
corset underneath it, because without it you just kind of
look like a lumpy mission up into your d have
a spine that moves, and you create wrinkles in your dress. Yeah,
I mean, I um. If you ever want to see
an example of the problems that are created by not
having undergarments, I think if you go to like a
(18:04):
big convention or something. There are a lot of people now,
even at things like dragon Con and Comic Con, and
especially with steampunk having gotten so popular in terms of
making Victorian clothes more popular again, there are always people
that are maybe a little newer to costuming and they
don't realize they need the foundation garment and you can tell,
like you go, oh, something's not right there. The outfit
(18:25):
looks beautiful, but there they don't have the right undergarment.
And that's kind of a great quick lesson for the eye.
Like visually, oh, I see what happens with and without.
So if anybody's ever wondering troll around a convention and
look for the people in historical clothes that forgot to
make a course with, well, it's it's cool too. And
(18:46):
I can appreciate that you talked about the different silhouettes
that even thinking about silhouettes, where of course that doesn't
seem like an evident part of it, so sort of
like direct to our style, you know, so post French Revolution,
dramatic change in clothes. Stop thinking about Marie Antoinette, start
thinking about Empress Josephine or someone. But there's still structural
(19:10):
garments underneath there. It's not just a willy nilly world.
Although Marie Antoinette was kind of a forebear of it
was with her her time at night. I was like,
I don't want to do with this stuff anymore. Um.
And there were a lot of scandalous things written about her,
how she didn't wear a corset and also asserting her
(19:31):
sexual promiscuity as being evidenced by the fact that she
didn't want to wear a corset at her private quarters,
and um, you know, it's a fascinating thing. But even so,
there was always a chemise under there, and always something
always again, because they did not have modern washing machines,
those fabrics were expensive and very fine, like even a
(19:53):
lot of the time on a chemise that was very
well appointed with beautiful trim. The trim was usually just
based it into lace, and the servants would actually unstitch
it from it so they could give the undergarment, a
good hard wash and then put that delicate lace back
on without damaging it. Like there was always stuff always
had to get moved around. It's good to hear, Holly,
(20:13):
that makes me feel better about the cleanliness of people
in the past. Well, then you hear you know other
tales of gentlemen that would wear their same union suit
all winter long and only take it off in the
spring to wash. We've done enough Arctic exploration episodes have
the full picture of wearing the union suit all winter.
(20:35):
But we've got to talk about the debate over courses
that too, because we've sort of been covering the era
where h the really extreme corseted figures might go in
and out of style, but there's always something there. But
eventually in sort of the second half of the nineteenth
century when it starts to become something that people get
really up in arms about, or even before that or
(20:58):
some There are a lot of political cartoons from um
colonial era that are about women foolishly, you know, jostling
themselves into the tiniest possible thing. There are some really
funny ones with very robust sized women trying to get
really thin down and they have the big giant Marian
twinette do on. Yeah, historical political cartoons are some funny,
(21:21):
funny business about fashion are really really funny. I saw
some a woman wearing a large crinoline and criticizing her
maid for looking like a fool for wearing a much
smaller one. All sorts of things like that, little snarky
old cartoons are amusing. Yeah, so there were I mean
there were people doing that even then, um, that were
(21:44):
tight lacing and being criticized for it. It's like, don't
you know your place, Like, please stop trying to be
something you're not. Um. And there were doctors going all
the way back that were like, I don't think this
is a good idea, but really, how than hygiene reformers,
clergy even saying that this was not a good thing
(22:05):
or this is a good thing. Uh, feminists of course,
and um, part of this seems like just because of
coursetting did get so extreme during this time with the
lost places Gibson girl. Yeah, that's really like there was
a transition from the hour glass of Victorian era and
even within without bustle, that hour glass kind of stayed
(22:26):
in place for quite a long time. Um. If you
look at course it's from you know, early pre Civil
War part of the eighteen hundreds right up through the
you know, nine hundred nineteen o one. They have pretty
much the same shape. There's some variation, but it's always
the hour last shape. But then something happened and it
became more about thrusting the bust forward and the rear
(22:49):
end back. And I think that's got so extreme that
that's where the kind of debate over it really hit
a fever pitch, because it starts to look clearly uncomfortable
and and like it might even have some long term Yeah.
I mean that was really Um, there started to really
(23:09):
be a commonality of women having health issues cracking ribs.
I mean for your underwear. That doesn't make any sense,
Like could you imagine now an any lady, you get
up and you put on a brawn it correct your ribs,
Like that just doesn't happen. That that sounds to think
(23:30):
about time for a new style. That's happening, And I
mean that that's that was a result. Style started to
change in a more natural form started to arise, and
that that started to become more popular and um, of
course it's really freaked out. Of course it manufacturers what
are we gonna do? We've been putting women in course
(23:51):
it's for ever, what are we going to do now?
I read a really interesting article about the corset Manufacturers
Light which wasn't really actually as much of a polite
as you might expect um in the Journal of Social
History by Jill Fields and um. She wrote that the
course that saleswoman became really important. You needed to be
(24:15):
a specialist. And you talked about this earlier that people
who say, of course it is automatically uncomfortable, they're in
the wrong one. Um. So that became an important aspect
of it. You had to have the right fit. It
wasn't just here's your measurement, here's the waste you're going for.
But also it became something that wasn't just about style
(24:36):
and dress. It became a discussion about science and modernity
and even race and really kind of icky ways, um,
and and just clasps and and things like that, the
uncorseted figure being slovenly um. But sometimes experts were even
drawn into this discussion. And the one that just really
(24:59):
blew my mind was this guy have luck Ellis, who
was cited by the Corset Manufacturers Association as claiming that
women had to be corseted because the evolution from a
horizontal to vertical position had been so much harder on women.
And he even said, quote, the corset is morphologically essential.
(25:22):
So this just made me think like boneless bags of
organs or something that could be our segue to the
Halloween discussion. But I just thought that was so strange
that instead of seeing this clear potential for other forms
of structural garments that you could sell, which is of
(25:44):
course what they eventually came to that realization. Instead you
you would think, no, you really have to be in
a corset, or you'll just collapse into a wicked witch
puddle or just pile. Yeah, exactly. But but of course,
you know, as styles changed of courset, manufacturers did realize
that there were other things they could sell. You could
(26:05):
sell dance course it that's my favorite, sport courses. You
have women playing organized sports that there are women's colleges,
You have things like tennis and bicycling. You have tango parties,
and you can't wear that really rigid corset if you're
in a tango or play tennis. You need a specialized product. Yeah,
(26:29):
and and eventually just the whole silhouette really changes to
UM in the in the teens, the debutante slouch. That
might be my favorite thing I learned in this episode,
just adopting this entirely new posture. Whereas you talk about
Queen Elizabeth portraits of her, she's so upright, and that
(26:49):
had sort of been a standard for a very long time,
the new posture being one where you thrust your abdomen
out to partly minimize your bust, And it was just
it must have been so strange looking now are used
to people with all different sorts of postures, good and bad.
It must have been so strange though in this time,
especially with older women probably still maintaining a lot of
(27:12):
the more traditional styles and postures. Oh yeah, and especially
I mean part of that is born to the fact
that UM textiles and designers approaches to textile started to
change so much that they were starting to cut garments
on the bias because it could be made so much
faster thanks to the Industrial Revolution, that they could play
with how fabric draped a little bit more, And that's
(27:33):
actually considered kind of a I don't want to stay wasteful,
but that's the word keeps coming to mind. It's almost
a wasteful way to cut a garment um. Normally you
would cut along the grain the warp or weft of it,
which are the perpendicular threads that run to one another,
and then you started cutting along the diagonal between them,
and it has this beautiful drape, but you burn through
(27:54):
fabric a lot faster. And so because you know, prior
to the big crash and twenty there was a lot
of opulence and there was a lot of like, we
can indulge ourselves with beautiful fabrics, let's cut it on
the bias um. And then of course it's weren't working
because they would show underneath that cut because it does
cling to the body and it kind of drapes, and
(28:16):
if the beauty of it is the draping, I imagine
you want the rigidity under was not looking so well.
I will not be shipping Bloomers. I don't have any
Bloomers to ship anywhere. You would want to keep the
Bloomers for yourself. I just imagine, because I think of
all of these underwear types we've discussed, Bloomers might be
(28:36):
sort of the most fun. Well, they're very personal, they're
they're just I mean I'm imagining, like baby bloomers, that
sort of thing. We're going to get into more of
the the details though, Yeah, it's very real. They're not
always the puffy baby pants I'm imagining. I mean, they
(28:58):
often were adorned with cute trim. But you know, it's
one of those interesting things. Um, if you've ever talked
about the Mulan Rouge and can Can dancers, you know
people always talk about how they were a little loose, uh,
sexually because they would dance and show off their split underwear. Okay,
everybody was wearing split underwear. And here's why. Let me
(29:20):
just take you for a lockdown learning lane. You may
not have wanted, um, if you are wearing bloomers which
go under your corsets and the chemise and then your
corset over it, there is no way to pull those
bloomers down without undoing everything, taking off all your clothes, etceteratcha.
So they were split, um, almost all the way that
(29:41):
entire scene that runs, you know, from your belly button
to the small of your back, between your legs, your
crop seam was almost open all the way in some cases,
so almost two pant legs with a lace right with
a draw string. Sometimes they weren't even joined well, and
again I'm going to go back to all of that fabric.
Allow was you when you were in the outhouse to
(30:03):
kind of pull those pant legs apart up around you
and then you could sit on the toilet and take
care of business. So a practical, practically practical. Yeah, if
you could call that practical by modern standards, it seems
woefully impractical, But that was it's it's practical reason. That's
why the underpants were split. They weren't split in and
so that they could show them all because can can.
(30:25):
They were just that was the only way to make
it all work and like live your life in a
semi normal It's kind of the disturbing note now to
apply that to can can cancer. I don't know. Hopefully
they were at least breaking out a pair of special
bloomers just for the can Can. You know. I think
it depends on where you were watching what yah which shift?
(30:47):
Probably um so bloomers you want to move back on
up to the brazier. Yeah, although we should talk about
the bloomer trend. You found fascinating that we talked about
a little before. They're fake and I think this is
maybe what I think is kind of cute. So i'm
(31:09):
i'm I'm identifying with the cute baby bloomers and then
the pantiles because they're just they're so strange, so fun. Yeah.
So they apparently appeared in fashion magazines as early as
eighteen o five, but didn't really catch on for a while.
People must have just seen them because they do look.
It's a bizarre look, um, And I can imagine women
(31:33):
in eighteen o five with these radically new silhouettes already
being like, okay, and now I'm supposed to wear pantal lips. Um.
But they did eventually catch on, although they finally became
something that just little girls would wear. But these are
little pants that would peep out from under your dress,
(31:56):
so not the floor sweeping dresses anymore, ones that about
ankle length or so. So you would have pants, very
pretty fatten ones, ones with lace peeping out from underneath.
And what I find so bizarre is that eventually it
got to the point where you might not want to
(32:16):
wear that, but you liked the look, so you would
wear false pantlets, which were I have to imagine just
leg warmer with tapes attaching them up. To your your waist,
whatever other garments you have going on up there. Um.
Polly and I were speaking earlier about dickies, you know,
(32:37):
false fronts for false turtlenecks, false cancels, things like that
basically away to look like you're wearing an undershirt that
you're not really wearing. And I can I can see
that I've never worn one of those myself. I don't
have any false turtlenecks, but I can see the appeal
(33:00):
for something like that. You want to layered, look, you
want to but not mess with old stuff. I can't
really get my mind around false pantalot because it doesn't
seem like it would be any more convenient. It seems
like having these weird tapes going over most of your
legs and then leg warmers, things would get twisted and uncomfortable.
(33:20):
We've already talked about the split bloomers and all the
fabric there and how awkward that is, especially with a
crinol um. It's just more Fabrican weirdness, whereas it seems
like just a pair I'm imagining comfy PJ loose pants
that you wear under your dress. Seems so simple. Maybe
we should bring it back I doubled dog there you
(33:41):
all do it if you do it in here with it?
I mean, can I wear leggings under that? So that
counts alright. Final topic is this. If we weren't talking
about this now, I think Dieplena and I would be
talking about it in our amazing twenty twelve Discoveries in History.
Even though it's not technically discovery, they had to date
(34:06):
and be very careful with their data. Yeah, so we
are talking about the oldest bra in the world, or
what's believed to be the oldest bra. So um previous
assumptions up until now, or that men wore these shirts
that we've discussed, women wore sms course at whatever other
(34:26):
sort of garments. But there wasn't a braw like what
we think of as a brawl, and we should we
should give some some detail to that because bandeaux styles
were also worn in ancient Greece, so we're not talking
about a brawl like that. A bra has to be
two distinct cups right to count, not not like an undershirt,
(34:47):
not like a camusele shirt, but an actual structured garment
with seeming that creates, as you said, the cups for
each of your breaths exactly. That's a weird thing here.
So in two thousand eight, UM there was a very
interesting discovery in East Tyrol, Austria, in Langberg Castle, which
(35:08):
was built I think they're guessing around eleven ninety or so,
but the castle had been pretty extensively remodeled in the
fifteenth century and during some two thousand eight works and
two thousand eight renovations, this vault of trash was discovered.
And I love things like this because it gives you
a peek at everyday life rather than the things that
(35:31):
people have preserved for whatever reason. This is a vault
of trash. It's filled with things like wood, textiles, scraps, yeah,
all the stuff that nobody would have really cared about. Um.
But because of the conditions in this vault, all of
it is really well preserved. So two thousand, seven hundred
textile fragments were found. According to the great Smithsonian blog Threaded,
(35:55):
which is lots of fun for fashion history, UM and
um hung those fragments were four brash, Yeah, and it
is fascinating because this, you know, the fifteenth century is
one of those times when most costume historians are at
best taking a wild stab at at the layering that
(36:16):
may or may not have been going on. We know
their clothes were very tight, and a lot of people
have just assumed along the way that just the tightness
of the clothes was kind of covering all of the
bases of keeping everything in place, because I mean it
went all the way down to the arms, like, um,
if you see any modern um films or anything about
(36:36):
that are what people often remark is that the the
bodices and the arms are all very form fitted and tight,
and like, how would you move not so much? Um.
This kind of turns that whole concept on its head,
it really does. And and they're different style bras too,
so it's like you got a little selection from the
department store on us. It's not just one cut. There
(36:59):
two that look kind of like this contraption that's occasionally
referenced from this period called breast bags, and it's kind
of like a halter top like today's standards. So I
was I was talking to Holly about breast bags and
and thinking that they sounded really awkward. Somebody wanted to
(37:20):
talk to me about that, and you did say, it's
basically like a halter top. So two of them kind
of like that. Apparently those could be used for various
uh silhouettes that you were going for, whether to minimize
or enhance. I feel kind of weird saying that on
the podcast a little late, but they do essentially just
look like supportive halter shirt. Almost the third looks like
(37:46):
a modern brawl it's got straps and cups in a backband,
and then the fourth looks like a fifties style braw
one that extends low on the rib cage um, I
guess for some extra support. But the really well thing
about all of this is they're they're pretty. I mean,
if you look at the picture of a of the
one that they're really showing off, it does look like
(38:08):
a bra. But as much as it has been destroyed
over the years, it's pretty, you know, but there was
it has details on it. It's not just this um
utilitarian garment. Well, and there has been some discussion about
whether or not about the its actual use, whether it
(38:30):
was a functional foundation garment or if it was more
of a boudoir garment, which brings up a whole nest
of other questions of like you never think about, you know,
kind of that sort of tittilating approach to fashion going
on so much in that era, even though I'm sure
it must have been on some level. I meant everyone
has wanted to police a partner at some point in
(38:51):
time since history began. Um. But yeah, so there is
a lot of debate over the actual um purpose of
that garment and why would they make it so well,
we make pretty undergarments that no one has ever meant
to see or at most, you know, our closest family members.
So it's kind of fascinating from that perspective, it is,
And um, it's just a little a little peek into
(39:15):
fashion from hundreds of years ago, and also such an
eye open ur two for for folks who assumed that
the bra is something that didn't develop until way way
after this, that the bral had to have come after
the corset. Yeah, And I mean it's if you look
it up online or even in many books. The history
(39:36):
of the bra usually starts in en when Mary Phelps Jacob,
who is a socialite who found that those bias cut
garments that I was talking about earlier, her corset messed
up the line of it, like you could see the
bones sticking out, and she didn't find it pleasing and
that she and her maid concocted what was the first
bra out of two handkerchiefs and some ribbon. I have
(39:57):
some series. We actually did a broad episode it on
Pop Stuff, and I kind of went off on my
I bet the servant did all the work, she took
all the credit. I don't. She was probably a lovely girl.
But that's where we normally mark the start of the
modern brazier, because even though there were various forms, that
was the first one that was patented, and then she
(40:17):
sold that patent and it took off as an industry. Well,
and um, we had been I think a listener had
recommended this article, this BBC history article where this news
came out about the bra fine too, to our podcast
and then also to mom Stuff because clearly they're going
to be interested in this news too. And I forwarded
(40:40):
the article onto y'all are just gonna think I sent
Holly all underwear article, any any historical underwear. But I
did something I'm fascinated with which you knew I did,
so I forwarded onto you and I remember your response
to that too, And it was at first, you know,
I saw the subject line and I was just ready
to dismiss that. I was thinking, Oh, surely will be
(41:00):
some modified corset or band do, and You're like, it
really looks this looks like a bra um So I
think everybody might need to go check out that picture now.
It is. It's very eye opening because it looks exactly
like a bra you would buy now that went through
the dryer, like exactly, and then you're dog chewed on
(41:22):
it a little bit. That's how you could recreate your
own historical garment. Historical garment. Yeah, it's so fascinating, and
you know the I'm always fascinated by all of this
from both the fashion standpoint and the development and evolution
of fashion. I mean, there's so many things we could
still talk about because I'm such an information junkie about it.
(41:43):
But I just think sociologically, it's really fascinating how people
have treated their bodies through time in the interest of fashion. Yeah,
and I think people deciding to accept or reject fashions
that are either clearly uncomfortable or weird is really neat too.
(42:05):
So so um the idea that women would accept the
s shaped course it, you know, the epitome of beauty,
but then against it too. Eventually, I'm not going to
wear something like that anymore. And and you really do
get into that more in the teens and twenties. Um,
but then it goes back to with Christian Dior's new look.
(42:28):
I mean, we've got to at least mention that for
a second, sort of a return to a course that
it look and a lot of women really didn't like
that that that was the direction style was heading back.
And there were protests over over that look, but also
a mass exception or acceptance of it rather too. Um,
(42:49):
something so different from the box the war rationing styles
that had that had come immediately before. So what fashions
were what one still when people decide to accept it,
When they see those pantalets in eighteen o five and
are like, I cannot imagine wearing those, but then their
daughters wear them a generation later, it's really neat to
(43:11):
me to think about all that. Yeah, And I mean,
of course it's are so fascinating, I think to people
today because people still wear them. I mean they're fetishized
in some cases, but also just as a fashion garment,
they've moved outside there and I mean they are Bible
parties that are impeautifully you know, made corsets, and that's
sort of how I became fascinated with them, was seeing
(43:32):
like these really beautiful, fascinating costume pieces and going, oh,
that's really where I should learn how to make those.
And that's how I ended up down the rabbit hole
of like having this ridiculous library of books about the
history of corse of tree and how it's evolved. And
I just, uh, there's a reason we're fascinated with underwear.
I'm not sure what that reason is even, but of
(43:53):
course it's I think in particular, really strike accord with
people because one, they tend to be divisive. Um, you
either go oh yes or that it's crazy, and there's
not a lot of in between. And two, I mean
there's just something fascinating about kind of taking control of
your shape in that way that draws people into it.
And we didn't even get into tight lasers. Really like
(44:16):
the people that really do body modification through prolonged use
of courser try um, which is a fascinating world in
and of itself. Um yeah, it's like the one garment
that just makes people. Yeah, the undershirt is not. It
doesn't have that same like, oh, chamiss, tell me all
about them. We gotta incorporate those in outward fashion. Uh yeah, alright, well,
(44:41):
I'm gonna make bloomers come back. You and me both
are gonna start wearing them underdress pantal lets all the way. Yeah,
pantal let's all right, Holly, let's make this happen. You
don't angle that carrot, I will hold you to. I'm
gonna come into work in a couple of weeks and
there will be like a neatly folded parapet on my
on my desk. I'm not sure what length dresses I
(45:05):
would even have to wear with pantal it, so I'd
have to get out my old prom dress or something
just below the knee for pantalt that might look like
I was living in the Oneida Commune or something. We're
not going to go full length bo peep. We're going
to go calf length on the pantolets, just to loving
the on the dress. We're gonna post pictures. Oh my god. Okay,
(45:31):
well we'll all look forward to that, to the new
fashion trends, new new historic. UM. So, if you guys
want to share any other details about probably historical underwear
or historic inspired underwear, um, let us know. We are
at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on
(45:52):
Twitter at Miston History, and we are on Facebook. And
I know that so many of our listeners so and
a lot of you guys are actually heard from costumers
UM doing theatrical costume and cosplay stuff. And I really
hope that you guys enjoyed this especially and and share
some of your own stories about UM trying to get
(46:15):
that right look that Holly is talking about. You can't
just wear the dress. You've gotta have start from the
inside out exactly. So UM, I don't know do we
have any cool fashion related articles. We actually have an
article on how course It's worked? Perfect, Okay, cool, breezy.
It doesn't get into all of the stuff that we
got into here, but it covers all the basic points
(46:37):
and you should absolutely check that out. Yeah, you can
do that by searching for how Course It's Work on
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