In
The Truth Revealed: What Do Regency Ladies Really Wear Under Those Thin Yet Elegant Empire Dresses? Ms. Place uses an etching of the period, attributed to Thomas Rowlandson (shown here hand colored by another artist), to address the matter of what lay beneath the dress of this period.
Says Ms Place:
This caricature depicts the staircase leading to the Great Room at Somerset House in Pall Mall, which was where the members of the Royal Academy exhibited their paintings. The stairway to the Great Room was steep and long, and undoubtedly tough to negotiate during crowded days.
Rowlandson's caricature speaks to the popular perception that there were two kinds of viewers who came to Somerset House: Those who wanted to see the paintings and sculptures, and those who came to ogle the ladies whose legs and ankles were exposed walking up those prominent stairs.
I myself was a bit reluctant to take an artist's bawdy renderings (seriously the sort of etchings one might be invited up to see sometime *wink*) as the only proof of such fashions. For example, one must consider matters of propriety, hygiene, and class when looking at fashion. Was this really typical?
Knowing a (wee) bit about historical fashions (and costumes), I do recall that Regency fashions were inspired by classic Grecian dress (though also, for added options, using Egyptian and other designs as well. In any case, what we have here are very simple gowns, like night gowns really, and as such this affected the options in undergarments.
There were layers of undergarments, but they were limited or rather modified from the undergarments of the previous fashions (and the following fashions as well). It is both the lighter, or diaphanous, dresses and the lighter undergarments which caused folks to consider the high fashions of 'the youth' to seem reckless, daring, and baring. (As the mocking illustration exaggerates.)
There were indeed layers of undergarments. Beneath the gown the following garments were worn:
1) A chemise, or shift. Meant to protect the outer clothes from perspiration, this was made of white cotton and was washed more frequently than outer clothes.
2) A corset. Corsets were not worn directly next to the skin but over the chemise (again, to keep the corset cleaner as the chemise is easier wash). However, this corset has shorter stays, extending just below the breasts, and lighter 'control' than earlier corsets; not like the Victorian corsets most are familiar with.
3) A petticoat. Worn between the true 'underwear' and the outer dress, the petticoat was usually longer than the dress, which meant it would be seen and therefore often had a fancy hem full of lace and/or ruffles. This was not just a come-hither bit of frou-frou; petticoats longer than the dress meant the hem of the petticoat(s) would be dirtied &/or damaged and not the dress hem. Hence, they were practical.
And, of course, 4) stockings.
You, astute reader, will note that these underthings for women are crotchless -- not in the tawdry adult-store-panty way of today, but in the 'skirts' not 'pants' sort of a way. This for several reasons:
Number one, because this was a world sans elastic and a woman would have a very difficult time hefting all the skirts to untie a waistband and drop drawers.
Number two, clothing was both expensive and a bitch to launder (and by 'bitch' I mean it was hard work, involving coarse soap and boiling water, and it was terribly rough on fabrics). Keeping clothing as clean as long as possible -- and keeping clothing intact as long as possible -- was something nearly all wished for. So, crotchless undergarments for women it was. (And not only the Regency period either.)
Which begs, of course, the question of menstruation (we are discussing Regency "Period Fashions" after all! *wink*)
While blood may be thicker than water, a woman may not hold it; so what did women do about their cycles?
Well, for one thing, the average Regency woman did not need to worry about her monthly curse -- at least not monthly. Don't just take my word for it; see what Iryce Baron,
2007 UIAA Educator of the Year, has to
say about it:
In most non-industrial cultures, girls do not reach menarch until they are well into their teens. During the Regency and Victorian periods, most girls in Britain and the US began to menstruate sometime between the ages of 15-17. I believe the average age of menstruation in the US now is around 12.5 years old.
In addition, once girls began to menstruate in the 18th and the 19th centuries, they did not have continuous menstrual cycles each month, interrupted only by 2.5 pregnancies, as is now the statistical average in most postindustrialist Western nations. Middle class to upper class women, married in their early twenties (working class women even earlier) and would have been pregnant and nursing for much of their adult lives. ...many of them would have had very few menstrual cycles in their entire lifetimes.
...For most of the time that humans have been around on this planet, females were not undergoing the hundreds of menstrual cycles they now find is de rigeur to experience.
So this is likely why the women didn't leave bloody trails in Rowlandson's work. Oh yeah, Rowlandson! Where did we leave him? Oh yes, it seems his piece isn't accurate regarding female fashions...
Was Rowlandson actually fooled by fashion?
Fashion-Era.com, on the matter of Regency underthings, says:
The pantaloons were made of light stockinet in a flesh toned nude colour and reached all the way to the ankles or to just below the knee. This is why Empire women often appear to be wearing no underwear when seen in paintings of the era. The flesh tone pantaloons acted in just the same way under clothes as they do today when a women wears a flesh toned bra and briefs under white or pastel trousers and top.
Could Rowlandson have been so fooled? It's possible.
It is also possible that Rowlandson's etching is erotica and so is not reflective of the dress at the time as it is of fantasies.
But, and this could just be the smut collector speaking, in this etching by Rowlandson I see two peoples -- the do'ers and the watchers. (And even the timeless question of art vs. pornography with shades, like erotica.) Here Rowlandon's ceratinly drawn lines (oh, the puns -- I cannot resist them, you know!) between the groups of people... Could the etching be satirical or otherwise a social commentary?
Well, as is the case often, if I had but Googled the artist I would have found this at the
Davidson Galleries:
Rowlandson's many comic illustrations offered humorous commentary on the political and social conventions of his day.
Sure, I could have Googled the artist first and skipped all the information and myth-information on fashion, undergarments and menstruation --
but where, I ask you, is the fun in that?
Stay near; more on Rowlandson soon, my pets.
Labels: Art, Collecting, Essays, Images, Lingerie, Sex Education, Sex History
Zenobia, The Queen Corset, Cortland Corset Co, Cortland, New York
