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A History of Foundation Garments

It's sometimes said that people just aren't as put together as they used to be. Some say that society went to hell when men stopped wearing hats and women threw away their girdles. Well,A History of Foundation Garments Articles that's debatable, but it is true that today, most people in the U.S. value comfort over formality in their day-to-day wardrobe. This has had a dramatic effect, for better or worse on how people look in their clothes and the image that they project out into the world. Men abandoned hats as a staple of their daily wardrobe, beginning in the late 1960s and women tossed their girdles away around the same time, preferring a more natural and comfortable look. That was revolutionary 50 years ago, but read more here foundation garments for women never really disappeared. They just changed, and then changed again. It really shouldn't be too surprising, for as long as women seek to shape and enhance their figures, there will be foundation garments.

What are foundation garments?

Foundation garments are garments which are worn underneath outer dress clothes and may, but not always reshape the wearer's body. All of the usual suspects, including panties, brassieres, corsets, bustiers, slips, girdles and control top pantyhose are foundation garments. Changing fashions and social pressures have always been a driving force for the evolution of foundation garments and historically, as hemlines changed, values changed and a different silhouette became the new ideal, foundation garments changed too.

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Throughout the 19th century, women who had money and time to concern themselves with fashion, all wore corsets. A corset is a very restrictive, shape altering garment with rigid boning and panels that constricts the body to create an hourglass shape. These were designed to emphasize a tiny waist, below which flowed petticoats and elaborate skirts. The short corset circled the torso and ran up from the hips to the top of the waist. Overbust corsets were longer and pushed up the breasts to create a high busom and a longer waist. This was considered the proper foundation garment for any "lady" of the day, with doctors touting numerous health benefits of wearing them.

Things started to change around the turn of the 20th century as women fought for their equal place in society. Women began to do more, and with this freedom looked towards newer less restrictive fashions for daily activities. The corset was soon replaced by the corselet, or corselette. It was a derivation of the old corset but lacked the rigid boning that went into  corsets. There was still a lot of shaping that went on with these, but because they lacked the boning, they allowed for a freer range of movement. Early corselettes consisted of cloth panels which were laced together to fit. Later these fabric panels were blended with rubber, creating a more stretch-to-fit construction like we see in so many foundation garments today. The cloth panels were much more flexible which made the corselet far more comfortable to wear than a corset. Almost without exception, corselettes had garters on the bottom to attach to stocking tops. At the time, it wasn't considered in good taste to go bare legged, so women always wore the hosiery of the day, stockings.

The corselette was a staple foundation garment for a few decades and continued to evolve. Starting with the 1930s, thanks to women such as Katharine Hepburn, it became popular for women to wear pants in more casual settings instead of dresses. This of course was quite a change for society, and for the corselette, as garters were obviously not needed with pants. Since upper body shaping was still desirable, the torsolette was drawn from the corselette. A torsolette is a shorter corselette which covers the bust but stops at the top of the waist and doesn't have any garters. This design is still in use today and is often called a body slimmer.

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