Panties history

Panties History

Panties are an essential part of our clothing and are one of the components of women's underwear.

Panties were a type of panty that usually wrapped around the thighs. They were made of wool, linen or cotton; even of tow, that is to say, of the coarse part of the flax or hemp. Underneath it could be other canvas.

The inventor of the panties is not known. Surely, he was not a single person, but a natural evolution of this garment over time. It is known that the first people to widely use panties was the Persian people, around 1,700 BC, according to some bas-reliefs found in the ruins of Persepolis, which was the ancient capital of the Persian Empire.

Etymologically, Breecches seems to derive from the Indo-European root “Bhrg”, which means “to break”, which is used here in the sense of “divide”, “separate”. The consonantal sequence "brk" implying a Germanic origin regularly changing the sound g to k, instead of belonging to the Indo-European languages. Therefore the panties was the garment that "separated the legs".

These were wide, puffy panties of various sizes, cinched between the groin and waist or extended to the knee. A garment that the ancient world often used as a single piece of clothing, strictly for men, direct heir to the loincloth.

Circa 1500 B.C. In Ancient Egypt, crochet stockings or leggings were common in the pharaoh's environment. They did not end in the groin but reached the waist, where it was fastened as a panty.

The Greeks were always reluctant to use it. The ancient Greeks considered this garment as belonging to barbarian people and did not use it; men and women did not wear anything under the peplo which was the outer garment used in ancient Greece.

The panty as such did not exist in Spain in the past, women did not wear anything. It was a male thing. It is assumed that the first intimate garment to appear was the loincloth, which dates back to the period of the Celts.

The Etruscans and the Romans adopted this garment from the Gauls. In Ancient Rome, both men and women wore beautiful clothing such as the toga or stole and a long tunic that reached almost to their feet.

Clothing that covered the legs was not well seen in ancient Rome. It was a custom of the barbarians, who lived beyond the borders or a form of protection for the legs of the poorest.

Braccae never came into common use in Rome, the capital of the Empire, some emperors even forbade their use in the capital. This garment was so strange for the first Romans, that sculptors and painters, to identify foreigners, presented them in their works with these garments.

When Roman armies began to venture north between 27 B.C. Until 476 AD, they began to understand the usefulness of covering the legs to combat the cold. Over time, it became a popular garment among legionnaires and especially in the cavalry: riding with braccae was much more comfortable and warm in cold regions than riding with a skirt.

The barbarians used two types of pants, some were called Braccae and the other Feminalia. The Romans adopted the braccae.

The Feminalia were Braccae that adjusted the legs. It was a male garment, the name was given by the Roman army to refer to that barbarian garment, which by adjusting the legs made the enemies look like women.

The Panties, Braies, Breecches, Braccae in Latin, is a unisex garment, which was used by both women and men, had the shape of pants and was worn by almost all the nations of the Mediterranean basin around 600 BC, including they came to dress in India. They were widely used by the Gauls

In Rome, footwear, stockings, leggings and panties have an intertwined history: they were part of the calceuso borceguí, which covered the foot and leg, and ended up being a protective garment for the lower abdomen. At first, the Romans regarded it as the clothing of uncivilized people, so when they represented a barbarian god they dressed him in wide, flowing panties.

The Braccae are held by a leather cord at the waist and their length varies from the knees to the ankles depending on which tribes wore them. Further north, the braccae were longer and made of raw wool from the cold. Unlike feminalia, braccae are loose garments.

The Sarmatians who were a barbarian people also used this garment, in the monument of Trajan's column in Rome, where the campaigns of this emperor of the second century are represented, a large number of Romans can be seen who dress them up to the knees, carrying the rest of the naked body: they were the braccae, where a group of Sarmatians also appear wearing braccaes. Its use became widespread in central Europe thanks to Celts. They arrived in Rome after the conquest of Gaul, being used by all social classes.

The third-century emperor Alexander Severus wore white knickers, abandoning the imperial custom of purple knickers, and from the fourth century tailors took it as a positive and proud thing to be good bracarii.

The Romans would impose the use of the pantyhose in their Empire and it would spread throughout Europe. The expression “being a bragado man” is a reminiscence of the time, as well as the word “fly”, which is still used today. Bragados men were brave men, although well-bragados men were also called those who hid something big.

Emperor Honorius banned its use in the city in 397 AD. C., but it continued to be the favorite garment of the barbarians. After all, the word is of non-Latin origin.

It was an outer garment widely used by the Visigoths.

Large, wide panties were a sign of distinction during the Middle Ages. Charlemagne's son, Louis I of France, also called Ludovico Pío, wore a shirt with wide sleeves and pantaloons, as seen in the mosaic in the Roman church of Santa Inés.

William the Conqueror, King of England, gave his wife some tights as a leotard, which included colored panties, but it was not a garment to the liking of the Church, which ended up prohibiting them for two reasons: it allowed the outline of the figure to be glimpsed, and It collided with canon law, which forced spouses to sleep naked.

The combination of leggings and breeches or panties gave rise to pantyhose in the Middle Ages, and they were prior to stockings, and which included pantyhose. Stockings are the result of dividing the panty into two pieces.

The panty would have a long journey through the Middle Ages, but always among men and without being adjusted to the body. It was somewhat unhygienic at the time. This garment continued to be used during the Middle Ages until the middle of the fifteenth century. From the middle of the 13th century, short panties appeared, which replaced long panties.

Lingerie or underwear was considered another class of dresses, which were not made by tailors. What differentiated the social classes was the quality of the fabric and the cleanliness of the underwear. The dyed garments, as well as the garments made by tailors, could not be washed, so the underwear was a protective barrier not only of the dresses with respect to the body, but also of the body with respect to the dresses.

Medieval panties were generally made of linen, forgetting the material used by barbarians in other times, wool.

Unlike this, linen is washed without shrinking the garment. Linen even gets better with washing as it gets softer. The surface of linen is smooth, therefore more comfortable and highly absorbent, which makes it ideal for the function of this type of garment.

Medieval panties were a male lingerie item. Although they were lingerie, they were not necessarily hidden. Workers often only wore panties in hot weather or panties and a short tunic. And it wasn't just the workers, all the men who wore a short shirt or a shirt with a split in the front when they were sitting let their panties show.

Medieval knickers evolved from their long form to their shorter form and in a second period they became more form-fitting to the body. Chronologically we can say that the long medieval braga is found from the 9th century, with some variation it came from the barbarian peoples and we can date it from the 6th century. The short panty can be placed in the 14th century and the short tight panty in the 15th century. (In the image: Lower edge of the panties raised and attached to the waist. San Juan de Acre, Navarrete, La Rioja year 1185).

Knitted stockings covered the foot, leg and northern anatomical areas in the 12th century, and it was a garment that underwent few changes. They were attacked tights, which were tied at the waist in the manner of modern pantyhose. Its consecration as a definitively feminine garment would take time to arrive.

The width of the fabric was from 50 to 90 cm. Linen was usually woven to 90 cm wide. Garments were not cut to size, especially lingerie, since the entire width of the fabric was used. To make panties, the entire width of the fabric was also used, so the upright was 45 cm.

Until the middle of the 14th century, panties would cover from the waist to mid-thigh or to the knee. At the end of the 15th century the panties end up joining the leggings, and at the beginning of the 16th century it forms a whole called calzas-panties. Even so, another panty is still worn underneath.

The truss is no longer used. A kind of waistband is made for the panty by folding the upper part of it and then making several openings through which a cord, strap or rope passes, leaving the ends out.

When the leggings are lengthened, reaching much higher than the thigh, they are fastened with a truss that in turn joins the panty.

There are two types:

-Extremely small and tight to be able to wear them with tights that were very tight to the body.

-More or less long and somewhat looser:

The external panty, also called panties, is a garment that is placed over the entire leggings. This external braga ended at the end of the XV being only used by fishermen, tanners, dyers, farmers, etc. and they would be cloth. It becomes an undergarment, giving rise to underpants at the beginning of the 16th century.

The women during all this time used open nightgowns to be able to go to the bathroom easily, or bloomers, which reached the knee but were still loose. The panties will be left as underwear in the sixteenth century. He would dress under a new garment called leggings/panties.

The panty was finally reduced to a very small and tight garment, until at the beginning of the 17th century it disappeared definitively in the male attire.

Panties are known in male attire, however, in female we can say that no written or iconographic references to them have been found. Therefore, a question arises.

Did women wear panties?

Bearing in mind that at the end of the 3rd century and the beginning of the 4th century in the Roman Empire, women wore a short and tight garment to practice sports, called subligaculum, which was a tunic with a rectangular design fastened at waist level, it is not I should rule out that they also wear them as an undergarment.

Russian Tsar Peter I was visiting Paris in 1717, and was walking through the streets of the city, when a woman slipped and fell on her back with her legs up. Pedro I observing such a beautiful picture of the legs of the Parisian woman, exclaimed with total mischief "The doors of Paradise are open".

French women of that time did not wear underwear, but the same thing happened to the rest of the women of the world. Until the end of the 18th century, women's undergarments consisted of long, loose-fitting blouses and tops with buttonholes at the waist or corsets, which was originally an aristocratic garment.

Also, petticoats were very popular, especially when doctors associated fatness with health, consequently fatness and wide hips were reserved for aristocrats. Skinny people were associated with illness and poverty. We can say that the panties we currently know is a modern invention.

Women never wore anything under their dresses for sheer comfort. Closing the flow of ventilation to the moist environment of the vagina, would cause them itching and irritation at a minimum. There was no water at home at that time in history, so it was relatively easy for infections to develop and for lice and crabs to proliferate.

Only during menstrual periods, women put a cloth between their legs, which they adjusted with a kind of sheet, very similar to the one used by Japanese sumo wrestlers, that's why they also wore several petticoats in case something escaped .

An unusual law had emerged in Paris, around the year 1800, which forced prostitutes to wear panties, probably for reasons of hygiene.

If the decorative bow is in women's underwear, it is because panties have not always been feminine paraphernalia. Beneath their petticoats, the women, especially the well-behaved, went bare-bottomed. Men wore panties, but it was a garment and not underwear, and since they were visible, they had to be pretty. That is why they were buttoned, says Denis Bruna, curator in the Fashion Department of the Museum of Decorative Arts in his book “In the 17th century, men's panties had buttons”.

From the 19th century, "lingerie panties" became popular, says fashion historian Catherine Örmen. With the advent of the crinoline in the 1850s, the use of these "modesty tubes" became common, as these wide garments lifted easily. The bow is therefore not conceived to adorn underwear. The first female panty ties had a utilitarian function, explains Denis Bruna:

"When the first panties appeared, since the elastic did not yet exist, they put on a string or a cord"

Women had to wait until the can-can era for them to start designing intimate garments according to their needs. "The history of women's underwear is linked to can-can dancers." Back then, underwear was just a way to keep warm and ward off infection.

The dancers were also obliged not to show more than necessary to their spectators, a rule that was also accepted by higher-class women: “These ladies wore their skirts with very open petticoats and their pa Intimate parts were very exposed, so they began to wear panties to protect themselves from the cold”.

Today's flat lace panties are reminiscent of these early panties, which had to be worn to protect women's modesty. But this also explains why they are still there today when their first use is long gone.

Bows were part of the legacy of lacing under women's outer garments. "The lace appears in bodices with whalebones, the ancestor of the corset, in the 17th and 18th centuries," continues Denis Bruna, before women's knickers were invented." The ribbons and bows were used to adjust the bodice to the chest, neckline and shoulders.

Decorative ties existed in the 18th century, reminiscent of one of the utilitarian ties, such as that found on the front of rigid boned undergarments, even though they were tied in the back. "It was used to embellish the object. Because to say that underwear was only made for the person wearing it is not very accurate. Underwear often had a decorative aspect because it was also used to show off the partner."

We don't know if the central bow is just to give balance and harmony. Ties could be an aesthetic reminder of social prestige because, during the 19th century, when women were finally able to dress themselves, some upper-middle-class ladies continued to dress in the old style because it was a "sign of social distinction."

Of course, Denis Bruna affirms: “This transformation of a utilitarian element into a decorative element was done by reducing it: the lace of the 19th century panties or the bodices with whalebones of the 17th and 18th centuries was much larger; they are small ties.” However, this strategy of associating ties and prestige did not disappear two centuries later.

menstrual panties

Menstrual panties are not a modern invention. This underwear already existed at the beginning of the 20th century, although it was somewhat different. Today they are more comfortable, more hygienic and constitute a real alternative to the use of tampons during menstruation.

In the late 19th century, the menstrual belt, which had similarities to a chastity belt, came into fashion, the fluffy bandage inside could be washed, the concept of disposable items came much later with modern consumer society.

So-called menstrual belts have been used until the 1970s, but at that time with disposable bandages. The first models of menstrual panties as we know them today were uncomfortable and particularly unattractive, but they got the job done.

The industry has worked on the technicality of the product in the 21st century. Therefore, although it is still hygienic protection, many menstrual panties can no longer be distinguished, at first glance, from normal comfortable and visually appealing underwear.

The structure of the menstrual panties is important. They have several layers of different materials, one of which serves to absorb. This ensures that the blood from your period stays off your skin for obvious comfort and hygiene reasons, but at the same time keeps it in place so it doesn't leak.

The first layer, the one that touches your body, is made of a more comfortable material, merino wool, cotton, etc. It quickly wicks moisture away from your body and is antibacterial. The second layer absorbs moisture like a sponge and is antibacterial.

The third layer, the outermost, does not allow any liquid to pass through, that is, it prevents leaks, but it must remain elastic and breathable.

Of course, the seams must be designed to stop the liquid.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Astor Landete, Marisa. "Valencia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, clothing and image". 1999. Valencia.

Bernis Madrazo, Carmen. "Costume and fashion in the Spain of the Catholic Monarchs: men". 1962. Diego Velázquez Institute of the CSIC. Madrid.

Bernis Madrazo, Carmen. "The suit and the social types in Don Quixote". 2001. Viewer. Madrid.

Barefoot Lorenzo, Amalia. “Fashion Notes from Prehistory to Modern Times”. 2007. Magazine of the Costume Museum. Madrid.

Menendez Pidal, Gonzalo. "The Spain of the thirteenth century: read in images". 1987. Royal Academy of History. Madrid.

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