Fashion museum exhibit looks closely at lingerie

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 ladies foundation garments in a new exhibition.

In about 70 pieces, “Exposed: A History of Lingerie” touches on the mechanics, marketing and cultural touchstones — hello Wonderbra! — that not only shape and adorn but also helped define culture around the globe.

The exhibition, which spans the 1760s to present day, opened June 3 and runs through Nov. 15. A companion book will be released by Yale University Press this summer.

The corset’s rise and fall

The corset’s profile was first upped in the late Renaissance and 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 or years. They were key in thrusting a woman’s posture upright to make the most of the shape the corset was intended to achieve, Hill said.

By the early 19th century, the corset still included a center busk but lacked all-around stays for a more softly structured fit that still encased the body and kept a woman’s posture erect.

“It was important for women to have this correct posture,” Hill 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 style,” but the designs remained “extremely restricting,” she said. Certain designs made a woman appear rigidly straight in front while resulting in a severely arched back.

By 1920, the corset had essentially become a girdle.

The peignoir and loungewear

One late 19th-century article discovered by Hill said 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 like the corset.”

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, so you still wanted something really fashionable, as luxurious as you could afford, but it was something that could be worn without a corset. We don’t see tea gowns today.”

Seduction and eroticism

The British company Agent Provocateur, founded in 1994 by Joseph Corre, the son of Vivienne Westwood, and his now ex-wife, Serena Rees, represents a turning point in lingerie’s modern history, Hill said. They opened their first boutique in 1996.

“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,” she said.

The evocative nature combined with high-end craftsmanship offered by Agent Provocateur led to a greater acceptance of eroticized undergarments and lingerie, Hill said. The company now operates boutiques around the world.

The Wonderbra

Pre-Wonderbra, women looking for some 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 first trademarked in the U.S. 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.

Sales were driven by a 1994 ad campaign that featured smiling model Eva Herzigova looking down at her breasts in a Wonderbra with the tagline: “Hello Boys.” The popularity of the ad, including billboards, sent sales skyrocketing. At one point demand exceeded supplies, Hill said.

“There’s an urban legend that when people saw these billboards on the street they would literally cause traffic accidents,” she said.

Share and Enjoy

Frock stars in making

Ahead of the Great Yorkshire Show, Stephanie Smith highlights the work of the county’s talented up-and-coming designers.

One of the most surprising aspects for many new visitors to the Great Yorkshire Show is not the size of the tractors or the variety of pork sausages in the Food Hall (amazing though these are), but the prominence granted to fashion.

It’s a strand of the event that has grown in size and importance for several years now, to the extent that there is a special dedicated fashion pavilion which stages four catwalk shows a day, on all three days, and features a wide variety of designers from high-end prestigious national brands to up-and-coming local students.

Every show is packed, every seat taken and it’s standing room only at the back – even when it’s not raining. The clothes are modelled by a team of professional male and female models from Huddersfield-based Morton-Gledhill, The Fashion Team, with the show styled, choreographed and organised by its owner, Bernadette Gledhill. Audiences are always delighted and frequently impressed.

This year luxury lingerie fitters and retailers Rigby Peller will debut, as will countrywear specialists Barbour and Max Mara, all fabulous feathers in the GYS cap. Also on the catwalk will be show favourites Hobbs and Keighley-based menswear company Brook Taverner, among other fantastic names.

Alongside them will be collections from students and graduates from Hull College, Harrogate College and Northallerton College. Student designs are an important part of the mix and audiences often reserve their loudest and most appreciative whoops and cheers for the college collections.

It’s an excellent platform for young designers, as Annabel Smith, lecturer at Harrogate College, says. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to showcase their work. Most of them are local so it’s really important to be seen as a local designer.”

This year’s crop of GYS student designers is bursting with talent and creativity, and some of their work has already won awards. And it’s not just fashion students as the hair and make-up are created for the catwalk by students from Bradford College – invaluable experience for them, and a great example of colleges working together as a team across Yorkshire. Student fashion can attract a reputation for being irritatingly outrageous and unwearable, but sometimes, that is precisely the point. We need our young people to push the boundaries, to explore new avenues, to kick against the established way and turn it upside down.

This applies especially to fashion and it’s a habit many internationally renowned designers never grow out of, regarding it as their job to surprise, outrage, make points, encourage thought and, above all, attract attention. It’s funny how, within a couple of years, what once seemed ridiculous has actually become part of the mainstream.

So hats off, and wellies on, to the Great Yorkshire Show for continuing to provide a platform for the county’s young fashion talent and supporting its right to take a valued place alongside the established fields of agriculture and business.

The Great Yorkshire Show takes place from July 8-10 at the Harrogate Showground. There will be four runway shows each day in the Skipton Building Society Fashion Pavilion.

• Designs by Hull School of Art and Design (www.hull-college.ac.uk); Harrogate School of Art and Design (www.harrogate.ac.uk) and Northallerton College (www.northallertoncollege.org.uk).

Location: Leeds Industrial Museum, Armley Mills, Leeds. Photographs: Doug Jackson Photography. Hair and Make-up: Bradford College. Models: Morton Gledhill, The Fashion Team.

Twitter: @yorkshirefashQ

Share and Enjoy