NEW YORK — From a 1770 corset to a 2014 bra-and-panty set in lacy stretch silk, the Museum at
the Fashion Institute of Technology has put the focus on lingerie and women’s foundation garments
in a new exhibition.
In about 70 pieces, “Exposed: A History of Lingerie” touches on the mechanics, marketing and
cultural touchstones that not only shaped and adorned but also helped define culture worldwide.
The exhibition, which spans the 1760s to the present day, runs through Nov. 15. (For more
information, visit
www.fitnyc.edu, and click on “The Museum at FIT.”)
The corset
The corset’s profile was first upped in the late Renaissance, and the garment remained popular
in many forms through the early 20th century.
“It was a pretty essential element of fashionable dress for about 400 years,” said assistant
curator Colleen Hill, who organized the exhibit.
The corset, which originated within aristocratic court culture and gradually spread throughout
society, was all about a slender waist, she said. By the mid-18th century, the desired silhouette
was an inverted cone, lifting the breasts with the help of stays crafted out of silk, whalebone or
wood.
Decorative center busks were carved, painted and adorned with text. They were key in thrusting a
woman’s posture upright, Hill said.
“It was important for women to have this correct posture,” she said. “It was essential for
fitting into your clothes, for decorum and for modesty.”
At the dawn of the 20th century, some corset makers continued to promote their wares as “
healthy,” but the designs remained “extremely restricting,” Hill said, and severely arched the
back.
By 1920, the corset had essentially become a girdle.
Loungewear
An late 19th-century article discovered by Hill noted that American women wore loungewear with a
corset underneath while doing morning household chores or preparing for their day.
The corset under a peignoir “is something French women did not do,” she said. “I thought that
was very interesting because some of these garments were meant to essentially be a reprieve from
these really constricting foundation garments.”
By the early 20th century, Hill said, loungewear served more functions. The tea gown developed
from the peignoir or dressing gown and was worn during 5 o’clock tea.
“It was something that a woman could wear within her home but you would greet your guests at
home for tea in this garment. You still wanted something really fashionable, as luxurious as you
could afford, but it was something that could be worn without a corset.”
Sexy undergarments
The late 20th-century trend toward sexy lingerie was popularized by companies such as Victoria’s
Secret and Agent Provocateur.
“They were selling lingerie that was highly eroticized, things that were high-end and
beautifully made, so they’re classy yet they’re taking a cue from things like the old Frederick’s
of Hollywood catalogs that are just really overtly erotic,” Hill said.
The evocative nature of such clothing combined with high-end craftsmanship has led to a greater
acceptance of eroticized undergarments and lingerie, she said.
A new lift
Pre-Wonderbra, women seeking help in the bust department relied on “gay deceivers,” an early
20th-century euphemism for falsies that could be placed inside bras, Hill said.
“Even some corsets from the 19th century have these kind of falsies built into them, so the idea
of augmenting your natural breast size in some way is very old and probably impossible to trace all
the way back,” she said.
Enter the Wonderbra, with its plunge, padding and pushup via underwire. According to some
reports, the name was trademarked in the United States in 1955 but came out of Canada in 1939, as
developed by Moses Nadler, founder of a corset company. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that the
Wonderbra really took off, Hill said.
