This is my new favourite book. Originally published in 1951 (the Dover edition above is from 1992), it’s a detailed history of underclothes (the clue is in the title!) from the medieval period to the 1930s. The information is collected from magazines and catalogues, as well as museums and the study of extant garments.
The tone of the writing, as you might expect, is rather dated, and reveals perhaps more than the authors intended about 1950s attitude towards underwear! But the descriptions are invaluable, and extremely detailed.
I only wish that the book had continued to write about one more decade. At the moment I’m interested to learn about underwear of the 1940s – specifically the Utility Clothing Scheme. There’s quite a bit of information out there about CC41 clothing, but I haven’t turned up much about the underwear. Was it included in the brand? Were people expected to just keep wearing the same old worn-out underpants? Did many people make their own? I’m still at the “googling vaguely” stage of research at the moment, so if anybody has any links that might be useful, please feel free to share!
I know a bit about this, having done quite a lot of research on the topic and started a small business recreating 40s underwear (look on etsy for Dorothy May Lingerie) There was a lot of home made going on, as these were the days when most women had been taught needlework at school, with things like the notorious unpicking of parachute panels. More complex things like corsets were sent away to be ‘remodelled’ with coupons having to be given up for any new fabric used to repair them. Most magazines carried adverts for corset remodelling services. There were utility designs for items of underwear but production quotas were very small so most people made do. Before the war many people only had 2 sets of underwear anyway! Get in touch if you want to chat more 🙂