Hidden Secrets
» Fashion
An exhibition in Britain documents the battle between bodily contortions and being beautiful that women have faced in their choices of undergarments.
Long before Howard Hughes designed an underwired bra to give Jane Russell extra lift in the 1950s, there was tension between the staunchly sensible and the downright sexy in underwear. But, throughout history there has been one constant: suffering for fashion has, for women at least, always been in vogue. The kind of stuff some have to put up with these days would be bad enough — from “chicken fillets” in bras to those jewel-encrusted visible G-strings, which surely chafe when events conspire against them. But should you glance at the scaffolding required to hold up a bustle dress or a Victorian crinoline, tears of pain well up.
The naked truth about knickers