A team of Austrian archaeologists has discovered four bras from the 1400s. It reveals that women wore the garment some 500 years before fashion historians thought it was invented.
posted by Egg Shen on Jul 24, 2012 - 45 comments

Corset books - recycle your underwear as art? To explore issues related to women's body image, Tamar Stone creates books from "corrective" women's undergarments. (via art for housewives)
posted by madamjujujive on Feb 2, 2006 - 8 comments

Beyond boxers or briefs: Undergarments vary much more than the current styles we find in the nearest haberdashery department or at Victoria's Secret. Mormons have the temple garment. Suffragettes invented bloomers, the next bold step after pantaloons. But throughout modern Western history, women tended to wear dress-like undergarments, (with or without accompanying drawers) though both 19th century men and women wore the union suit, an earlier type of long-johns.

Of course, there's always the earliest of them all, the loincloth, worn by the ancient Egyptians and Tarzan. Similar is the malo worn by some Pacific Islanders, the Japanese fundoshi (warning: excess of manflesh), and the more elaborate Indian dhoti, the male companion to the sari.

And we mustn't forget the bra! Though not a lower-body garment, it has had a long--if tumultuous--history worthy of quick mention.
posted by lychee on Jan 30, 2005 - 9 comments

Disney cast members no longer have to wear dirty underwear. Apparently those Mickey and Goofy suits come complete with a set of undergarments that the employee had to wear, and turn in at the end of the day to be laundered -- that was the plan, anyway. Turns out those undergarments weren't being washed thoroughly. "Some workers had complained about getting pubic lice and scabies. 'Things have been passed around,' said Gary Steverson, a stilt walker at Animal Kingdom. 'I know I don't want to share my tights and I don't want to share my underwear.'"
posted by RylandDotNet on Jun 7, 2001 - 13 comments