Do you know that one Icelandic witchcraft ritual courting again to the sixteenth century concerned the cautious de-gloving of pores and skin off the underside half of human corpses for the dwelling to put on as a pair of magical breeches referred to as nábrók? Or that tight-laced corsets had been traditionally blamed for tuberculosis, epilepsy, and ugly youngsters? These tidbits of vogue historical past are amongst lots of woven seamlessly into British author Nina Edwards’s latest guide, The Virtues of Underwear: Modesty, Flamboyance, and Filth (2024).
Printed by Reaktion Books, Edwards’s 253-page textual content on the origins and evolution of underwear is supplemented by 89 historic illustrations and pictures — 24 of that are printed in colour on shiny pages — pertaining to the cultural, social, gendered, and financial import of those “unmentionables.” Drawing from fastidious analysis, Edwards braids innumerable insights into contextual narrative in an approachable but non-linear method. The result’s a meandering but participating story that manages to take care of an entertaining grip on even probably the most TikTok-addled consideration span.
Robert Dighton, “A Fashionable Lady in Dress & Undress” (1807), etching (picture courtesy Lewis Walpole Library, Yale College, Farmington, Connecticut)
Serving as a sweeping introduction into the world of underwear, Edwards’s textual content is organized into eight chapters inspecting the aim and origins, social and financial connotations, materials historical past, advertising, and upkeep of primarily Western intimate attire — from corsets and codpieces, lingerie, swim, and athletic put on to toddler nappies and menstrual hygiene clothes. She underscores early within the guide that “a problem for the clothing historian is that it tends to be only the least worn, most formal, sometimes least loved clothing that is preserved for the future,” which inevitably leaves gaps in undergarment historical past.
“The material examples we have tend to be clothing that wasn’t worn very much, and so we have very little clothing; unless it was caught in an Ice Age like Ötzi in the Alps, it just doesn’t exist,” Edwards stated in an interview with the New Books in Ladies’s Historical past podcast. “If it was more or less worn out by the wearer, it then might be reused as rags or for other purposes, it wouldn’t have been saved.”
Fortunately, proof of underwear’s social and materials evolution has been preserved by way of documentarian pictures, which Edwards options closely all through the guide. She references and features a colour photograph of the pale blue, knit silk shirt worn by England’s King Charles I for his execution on January 30, 1649 — a garment he requested to maintain from shivering within the chilly and thus showing scared to fulfill his destiny — in addition to a black-and-white photograph of a preserved Inuit naatsit, or thong lined with seal fur, from the Nineteenth century.
Work, prints, sculptures, and illustrations abound all through the guide’s pages as important sources for understanding the lengthy arc of humanity’s relationship with underwear — together with a variety of Historic Roman mosaics, illuminations from Medieval manuscripts, Renaissance and Rococo work, and Twenty first-century billboard commercials amongst a swath of etched prints and collections pictures. Juxtaposing Nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock prints with a photograph of the Cardrona Bra Fence in New Zealand and extra, Edwards stitches collectively militance and modesty, class and cleanliness, sexuality and spirituality, couture crinoline and most cancers consciousness campaigns, and the trade of sheep’s wool for Spandex for ease and luxury in a rapid-fire overview of individuals and their intimate put on — each ever-changing.
“Amid what I’ve tried to provide — what reliable history I can — I’ve also made a number of surmises and suggestions, and a few examples from my own experiences,” Edwards advised New Books in Ladies’s Historical past. “I hope readers will question those examples with their own, and perhaps add to it and make it a richer picture because I do think it’s an area where an enormous amount of subjective knowledge needs to be brought in.”
Minoan snake goddess figurine from the palace of Knossos, Crete, with uncovered breasts and a corset-like belt, c. 1600 BCE, on the Heraklion Archaeological Museum on Crete (photograph public area by C messier)
1837 woodblock print of a Samurai warrior placing on a fundoshi (loincloth), from Murai Masahiro, Tanki Yoriaku: Hello Ko Ben (The Illustrated Important Horseman: Tips on how to Placed on Armour Unassisted) (1735) (picture courtesy the Nationwide Institute of Japanese Literature, Tokyo)
Honoré-Victorin Daumier, “The usefulness of a crinoline when cheating the customs” (1857), lithograph from Actualités, in Le Charivari (picture courtesy the Artwork Institute of Chicago)
Lingerie mannequin in bra and girdle, demonstrating sophistication with a cigarette, 1949, photographed by Stanley Kubrick (picture courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Pictures Division)
Follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder, “The Crucifixion” (c. 1575), oil on panel (picture courtesy the Minneapolis Institute of Artwork)
