The term lingerie derives from the French word ‘lin’ which means linen. During the French Revolution, women began to move away from corsets, camisoles, and petticoats.
Prior to that time, corsets had uncomfortable stiffening, which dated back to medieval times. During the revolution, French women began to dress in more of the model Greek fashion.
This revival was short lived in most areas of the world, and following the Napoleonic wars, the corset returned because the French dress was careful a sign of promiscuity. The more prudish design of women’s underwear remained from the end of the French Revolution until World War I.
By the end of WWI young women wore cloche hats, bobbed their hair and began wearing shorter skirts to shimmy and dance the night away.
The quest for flat chests, straight hips and buttocks, became the inspiration for the liberty bodice and the chemise. Flappers bound their chests and wore loose dresses, possibly as a reaction to increased women’s rights in voting and other political arenas.
Corsets finally lost their place in the usual order of things and brasseries became just plain bras.
The 1920s and 1960s both bucked the trend of the curvaceous woman. Ann Bolin, an anthropologist at Elon College suggests that “during periods of liberation, like the 1920s, when women had just gotten the vote, and the 1960s, when the Pill became available, the ideal shape for women de-emphasized their reproductive characteristics–the nourishing breasts, the wide, childbearing hips.”
When Betty Grable burst on the scene as every boy’s favorite pin-up girl in the 1940s, women again wanted to be curvy, culminating in Marilyn Monroe’s decidedly lush figure in the 1950s.
In the 1960s, popular model, Twiggy, looked as if she had never reached puberty, and that look fattened up a bit for the athletic look of the 1970s.
With the advent of the 1980s supermodels, bust size again increased, decreased again in the 1990s for the “waif” look (like a fat Twiggy on heroin), and now seems to have settled for a fuller bust with waifish waist, hips, and legs.
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