Undergarments - From Poultry-Baskets To Tights II

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

The dainty overdress and the shepherdess crook, the last adaptations from the Watteau style, were passing. Another great name, that of a very different figure, the herald of social revolution, was shortly to be associated with the design of Marjorie's dress.

A certain Jean Jacques Rousseau, not without celebrity, in revolt against aristocratic civilization, retired from brilliant Parisian society to a small house surrounded by woodlands, provided for him by the affectionate generosity of a wealthy and sprightly lady friend, Madame d'Epinay. Here, at his "Hermitage," at first beguiled by idealized memories of his youth and then suddenly swept by an unrequited passion which came upon him at forty-five, he produced an impassioned work of art pleading, against the intellectual temper of the society of his time, for nature, sentiment, love—Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise. So momentous was the success of this book, especially with the feminine public, that it literally revolutionized the prevailing manner of looking upon nature and society. The volume was quickly followed by Du Contrat Social, enunciating the "law of nature," "liberty," "equality," and "reason."

Thus we find Marjorie mightily taken with the ideas of the illustrious Jean Jacques and the new social philosophy then making its way throughout the world. Marjorie's portentous coiffure went down the wind, her corset was discarded, her high heels were cut off. Her hair was dressed merely with a garland of natural flowers, muslin replaced silk, the dress was made with rustic simplicity, a la Rousseau.

Quite unaware of his pending import as a creator of feminine Fashion, Jean Jacques wrote from the Hermitage the most touching story of a petticoat known to the Professor. Thus it appears in the Confessions:

Madame d'Epinay, uneasy at knowing that I was alone in winter, in the middle of the forest, in a lonely house, frequently sent to inquire after me. I had never received such genuine proofs of her friendship, and my own feelings towards her never responded to them with greater warmth. Amongst these proofs, I should be wrong to omit to state that she sent me her portrait, and asked me to tell her how she could procure mine, which had been painted by Latour, and exhibited at the Salon. Nor ought I to omit another mark of her attention, which will appear laughable, but is a feature in the history of my character, by reason of the impression which it produced upon me. One day, when it was freezing very hard, I opened a parcel which she had sent, containing several things which she had undertaken to procure for me, and found in it a little under-petticoat of English flannel, which she informed me she had worn, out of which she desired me to make myself a waistcoat. The style of her note was charming, full of tenderness and simplicity. This mark of attention, which was more than friendly, appeared to me so tender, as if she had stripped herself to clothe me, that, in my emotion, I kissed the note and the petticoat with tears.

The next arbiter of Fashion was the Reign of Terror. Silk stockings became taboo, and altogether Marjorie was obliged to dress very soberly. Then followed one of the most famous —and the most scant—of her costumes.

Altogether, says the Professor, a combination of influences, learned, literary, aesthetic and political, sowed the seed of the styles of Napoleonic times before the debut of Napoleon. Among the influences to affect Marjorie's undies were the archeologist's spade and a German scholar attractively named Johann Joachim Winckelmann.

We are told that the first important finds among the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, around the middle of the century, aroused a lively interest in antique art. Herr Winckelmann, grieved by the decay of art in Germany and Italy, wrote the saucily titled Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums, exhorting artists to take their models from antiquity. Translated into French a decade later, it became a smash hit in Paris. In the book trade of the time it went over like Mr. H. G. Wells' Outline of History in the drugstores of a later date.

The death of the decorative spirit of the age of Louis XVI preceded the classical severity of the Prix de Rome academician, Jacques Louis David. In Fashion, as in art, it was the antique virtues big moment. Marjorie was just wild about the classic dress of Greece and Rome.

The new classical style of the Directoire displayed Marjorie's ankles as she had never before had the opportunity to display them in France. The classical revival, however, did not extend to the abandonment of stockings. The antique virtues in vogue reserved this piquant note unknown to the ancients—hosiery. Directoire Marjorie's shoes, worn low, were apple-green in color, and her stockings were white or flesh-colored silk with embroidered colored satin clocks, pink or lilac.

Directoire Marjorie did not stop with her ankles. Her scanty costume, as in ancient days, was frequently slit up one side. And though her dresses were often very nearly transparent, she frequently discarded her chemise. Her corset was parked for the time being. It became an amusement in society to weigh all the garments of a lady's costume, including shoes, stockings, and ornaments. Fashion decreed a maximum weight of eight ounces for the whole outfit.

Influenza, attributed to the classical style, made its appearance in Paris, and great numbers in society fell victims to it. But, as said a writer whose beauty and wit made her salon one of the most celebrated of the time, "the balls went on—in the evening, one finds them at some ball, looking radiant, head up in the air, feathered and bejeweled, the shoulders nude, arms nude, and feet nude, for one could not call the spider-web stockings a covering."

Under her gown of antique model Marjorie's underwear, says a twentieth century writer on costume, "was of slight texture, close cut, and consisted of very few pieces." As to the "few pieces"? Another distinguished student asserts that "the most perplexing problem of the history of dress" concerns the sort of underwear it was that did "not interfere with the slim effect of the scanty gowns of sheer muslin and transparent gauze or silk tissue" of the infant nineteenth century.

This writer, Miss Elizabeth McClellan, finds a "possible ex-planation" in what appears to be the earliest advertisement of combinations. Its year is 1808, its locale England.

Invisible Dresses. Drawers, Petticoats and Waistcoats made of real Spanish Lamb's Wool. Mrs. Morris, late Mrs. Robert Shaw, informs ladies she has now ready for their inspection an entire fresh and extensive assortment of her patent elastic Spanish Lamb's Wool Petticoats, Drawers and Waistcoats, all in one, and separate. Articles much approved of for their pleasant elasticity, warmth and delicate color, will add less to size than a cambric muslin, and warranted never to shrink in the wash. Children's of every size, and made to pattern, at the Oriental Hosiery, Glove and Welch Flannel Ware-houses, No. 400 Oxford Street.

The enterprising and prophetic proprietress of the "Flannel Warehouse" offered another novelty, nothing less than union suits, presumably not unlike those worn almost universally early in the twentieth century:

Invisible India Cotton Petticoats, Drawers, Waistcoats and Dresses all in one.

Mrs. Robert Shaw respectfully informs those Ladies she has had the honor to serve for years, and Ladies in general, that she has manufactured for the Spring a fresh and extensive assortment of the above articles of real India Cotton; which articles Ladies will find well worthy their notice; being of a soft, thin, delicate and elastic texture, will add less to size than a cambric muslin, and warranted never to shrink in the wash. Children's of every size and made to pattern, at her Hosiery, Glove and Flannel Warehouse, No. 400 Oxford Street.

The date of Mrs. Shaw's astonishing advertisement of 1808, perplexingly early as it is, brings us into the Empire period. Then, so far as there is any record, it was not until over half a century later that anything like "patent elastic Lamb's Wool" union suits became at all generally known in Europe.

The fashions of the Consulate retained all the best features of those of the Directoire. The best known portrait of Marjorie belonging to the period is by David. We see her as Madame Recamier, half reclining on a couch with a tall tripod at her back. The painting is now in the Louvre. As to underwear, it is evident from her silhouette that this lady wore little.

Under the famous "pink nightgown," girded just below the breasts, was evidently worn a chemise, long enough to be called a slip. The symmetrically cupped breasts, uniform in all representations, evidently indicate some form of brassiere, probably the type now called an "uplift." No doubt, as in classical times, a girdle was frequently worn.

During the Empire a taste for Oriental silks and heavier materials, which may be observed in the portraits of Josephine, ushered in more substantial coverings and revived ornamentation in dress. When the silhouette changed again in the Restoration, Marjorie returned to the corset. Her skirt now being somewhat shorter, her slip withdrew to the length of a chemise or shift. As the skirt became fuller and the normal waistline dropped to support it, the petticoat returned.

The so-called Romantic Period which followed, the reign of Louis-Philippe, leaves no doubt of an underwear renaissance during the thirties and forties. Stockings came in many curious colors, which were given highly fantastic names.

For light on the momentous matter at hand, we must turn again to the stage. In Shakespeare's time women were represented on the boards by men. Pepys, in his Diary under January 3, 1660, asserts that this was the practice previous to that date. Evidently when women first performed in the theatre in the reign of Charles II, covering for feminine legs other than skirts and stockings was first noticed in England.

These women players, it is surmised, when sometimes called upon to appear without skirts, were obliged to draw some material over the entire leg for the sake of decency—as it was then interpreted. This presumably took the form of something like men's long hose in the Middle Ages. The French called this shapely novelty of women's wear calecon or calecons.

Now, says the Professor, walking up and down and stroking his natty Mephistophelean Van Dyke, the calecon has quite a story. Before it arrived in England, it was not unknown to French ladies as early as the middle of the sixteenth century. As an instance of this fact, it is recorded that Henri II had a whim to imitate this feature of feminine attire in his own dress.

Montaigne alludes to calecons. And the gossipy Brantome, with his penchant for the intimacies of ladies' apparel, deaclares, probably out of extensive personal knowledge, that "ladies of the court" did not wear them. In the eighteenth century, it is known that calegons, worn with "doublet" and petticoat, were used by French women when riding horse-back.

With the stage, however, they were more particularly identified. Opera drawers—thus they are repeatedly termed—were apparently an early form of "tights." Therefore, like tights of later times, calecons seem to have fallen into ill repute. The calecon was unpopular among French ladies comme il faut, because it was necessarily worn by the flues de l'Opera while on the stage. A distinguished French historian of eighteenth century costume, speaking of feminine fashions in the third quarter of that century, notes a curious anomaly: "To wear a calecon (a precaution of which a very small number availed themselves) was considered a sign of questionable character."

At the opening of the nineteenth century the calecon of the French stage evidently was something for travelers to write home about. Later, when we arrive in America, we shall find an American lady of the first eminence telling in a letter of what she saw with her own eyes in a Paris theatre.

"The elegantes," says a contemporary account by an English tourist, "are furnished with flesh-coloured opera drawers perfectly fitted to the shape." It reports further that "the petticoat is looped up to the hip with a diamond button, so that with every motion the whole limb stands exposed to view." The entire "limb" is really meant, as the account very specifically states "from its insertion downwards."

In 1807 a French fashion journal reported of a lady of lively reputation though certainly of Society, "She, under a clear muslin gown, put on flesh-coloured satin drawers, leaving off all petticoats." At least one writer, shrewd in many deductions concerning underthings, takes this to mean that the Empress Josephine had adopted the caleçon.

May not the colecon be considered as a possible solution of the historical underwear mystery? Did Marjorie wear 'em beneath her scant, nearly transparent Directoire and Consulate gowns ? Though nobody has even mentioned calecons cut off short to exhibit sheer stockings, in the summer of 1932, to jump ahead a moment, we did hear of something suggesting the idea of short calecons—maillots. Modern French dictionaries define these latter as "acrobats' tight flesh-coloured drawers."

With the evening frocks of 1932, as diaphanous as those of the early Napoleonic periods, it was reported by a fashion correspondent that the most ultra Parisienne was adopting "Vionnet's silk maillots," made like one-piece bathing suits and again omitting the foundation slip. This fashion, which had hitherto had little vogue before that season, was promising to loom large in Paris styles. Is it not possible that some ladies of those former times, in their slim gowns of slight texture, wore early maillots, an adaptation of the calecon?

We know what Madame de Beauharnais was pleased to leave off—"all petticoats." What she put on is another matter.