Historical Facts About Ladies Lingerie And More.

Historical Lingerie Facts
Working in the Lingerie trade for many years I am always interested in what underwear has been worn by women throughout history.

The Corset

Pink Long Whalebone Corset

A little bit of the Darker Side of Lingerie History.

Photo courtesy of this site. Click Here.Back in the dim dark ages of the whale bone corset not only did the whale succumb to the fashion of the day by contributing its very being to the whale bone used in corset ry. Oh and of course the by products of the beautiful Goliath of the sea were also used in soap manufacture amongst other things. The ladies of the day were used to wearing their corsets so tight that it was said the perfect waist was to be 15 to 17 inches there fore creating a very unnatural body shape as the inside organs were squeezed together and the lungs were not sufficiently able to expand due to the pressure of the corsets.

The ladies of the day were said to faint easily and I think we can understand why given this scenario. It was usually referred to as The Little Death when a woman fainted in this way. Women wore a camisole usually made from cotton, under the corset and one of the reasons for this was to collect the blood from the small ruptures that would occur from beneath her skin as the corset was pulled tightly from behind and left in place. Meanwhile the bleeding taking place through her skin, was being soaked up by her camisole, a she wore her corset throughout the day.
Women progressed from corsets to the flapper look of the almost boyish no breast straight look worn by the thoroughly modern Milli's of the 20s and you can understand why when you realise how their mothers had been so trapped in the garments of the preceding times.
As an aside here the women who came to lands like Australia and settled on remote farms soon tossed the corsets away as they found them restrictive and impossible to wear. Not only restrictive for the tasks they performed but also the heat of the summers in these colonial out posts made them down right unbearable and unnecessary. For the fashion conscious lady from the city it took a little longer to toss the corset, however as the fashion turned so did the ladies waists start to get bigger. All in all a natural progression and today due to many reasons corsets are constructed to be worn for mainly costume wear, bridal wear, adult wear or for medical wear or maybe just for the everyday lady to have some fun with. Gone are the days of restrictive and uncomfortable lingerie, today we expect lightness comfort, looks and definitely no more of those alarming Little Deaths.
A great read for anyone who likes a bit of history here at this site please click here

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