I’ve decided to invite guest bloggers to post about their style icons, historical fashion curiosities and just about anything they love that has been an influential force in their world of style. My first guest blogger is Beatrix from Trixie Fantastic.

From humble beginnings to marvelous feats of engineering, underwear has helped shield, shape and sassy-up our intimate bits since man first wrapped an animal skin around his waist. In that time ladies’ ‘delicates’ have evolved from simple protective devices to high-tech load-bearing equipment to an element of high-fashion outer-wear. This is an abridged history of how women’s underthings became fashion objects.

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away loincloths were the only thing worn. This generally cuts out the concept of under and outerwear. As time went on sartorial choices remained fairly limited to the various ways of wrapping a piece of cloth. Women also go the luxury of strapping down their breasts with strips of cloth or leather.

Medieval undies weren’t much to write home about. Women generally wore a long ankle length T-shaped tunic under their robes, leaving everything free and breezy underneath. Once we hit the renaissance, though, things started to get a bit more complicated under there. The corset is introduced as a waistcoat type garment that laces up and we see the beginning of a phenomenon that will continue, in varying degrees, well into our own time. This is when undergarments start to be used to manipulate the female form. The apex of this practice was reached in the 19th and early 20th centuries with heavily boned corsets, petticoats, bustles and hooped skirts imposing a particular silhouette on women, depending on what shape was in fashion at the time.

The corset circa 1890

It was also in the Victorian era that took underwear’s its job of covering and hiding peoples ‘bits’ to the extreme. Multiple layers of garments made sure than not even the knees would ever get exposed, unless, of course, the saucy minx in question chose to flash her knees about. In this picture you can just see the top of the pantaloons or bloomers (baggy long-legged pants with lace edging, worn under the petticoats) and the lace edging of the chemise (like a half-slip, or singlet) worn under the corset).

The use of heavily structured undergarments to shape and form the female body continued into the fifties, when every woman had a girdle for that tiny waist, a pointy, pointy bra and hoop skirts or petticoats for evening dresses.

We still do this today, to a lesser extent, with push up bras and those awful things that go all the way up to your armpits and squeeze the all the wobbly bits in.

Madonna in Jean-Paul Gaultier

Traditionally underwear is intended to be private. By switching this to the outer and confronting the viewer with what is usually hidden (which usually caused a bit of a scandal) the wearer or designer therefore marked themselves out as sartorially subversive, think Cyndi Lauper and Madonna in the eighties and nineties.

Christian Dior Fall 2009 Couture

Now somewhat more mainstream, today’s underwear-as-outerwear style garments range from the more accessible bra tops and bodysuits at Top Shop all the way up to Christian Dior Haute-Couture. In the Fall 2009 show even the shoes had lingerie detailing.

There is a fair amount of nostalgia is this revival, as there is in any revival. For example this collection shown above was inspired by old photos of models half-dressed in the Dior atelier from the 40s, and so references (as does much of what Galliano produces for the Dior label) the ”Golden Age of Couture”.

The inimitable Queen Michelle rocking a girdle like nobodies business.

The corset culture that has grown alongside the growth of various other counter-culture fashions, and the revival of the hour-glass silhouette (petticoats, tailoring, shoulder pads, high-waisted skirts and pants and belts worn at the waist are all demonstrations of this), has seen the fifties style corsetry and lingerie, that was once considered so old-fashioned, become collectible and desirable.

Underwear as outerwear is a trend that, in the eighties and nineties, had staid matrons clutching at their pearls and is still, to a degree, intended to shock. However this time around the revival seems to be driven more by the nostalgia than by shock-value.

What do you think of the ‘inside-out’ trend? Are you scouring eBay for girdles?

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