The Natural History of Lingerie

How long has lingerie been around? It has certainly been around for quite a bit longer than Frederick's of Hollywood. Although lingerie as we know it today was actually invented in 1723 by a Parisian professor of art named Jean-Pierre Lingerie (pronounced Lan-zhe-ree, incidentally--not Lawn-zhe-ray, which refers to a form of lingerie, the grass underskirt, worn on Oahu), there are definite indications of a rudimentary type of lingerie in the Homo habilis fossils unearthed by anthropologist Louis Leakey at the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.

Thirty thousand years ago, Cro-Magnon woman was thought to have used garter snakes to hold up her stockings, and before that, Australopithecus Prometheus woman apparently wore the skins of koala bears--the first teddies.

But back to Professor Lingerie. On a Thursday evening in December of 1723, an event occurred in his drafty studio in Montmartre, where he taught life-drawing classes, that would alter forever not only the professor's own life but the very fabric of fashion history.

On this chilly December night, Professor Lingerie's nude model Mimi, a plump young woman from the Pigalle district, had complained of goose bumps. Mimi asked the professor if she could be permitted to cover herself, if only till the goose bumps flattened a bit, and Lingerie said, What was the point of drawing from the human body if that body were draped in folds that totally concealed it, for God's sake?

Teeth chattering, Mimi persisted. Exasperated, Lingerie looked about for something that might warm his model without totally obscuring her voluptuous figure. He spied a piece of white silk he'd been using as a paint rag--part of an old formal gown, long since discarded by his wife. He seized it, then swiftly and irritably fashioned it into a makeshift bra and step-ins. He then fitted his hurriedly constructed garments over the shivering young woman and returned to scrutinizing his students' sketch pads.

But his students--all young men in their early 20s--seemed paralyzed. They were inexplicably unable to move, unable to hear his entreaties to continue drawing, unable to do anything but stand and stare at the model now draped in two hastily fashioned scraps of paint-smeared white silk. Lingerie turned and looked in the direction of their stares and realized he had unwittingly created something even perkier than a naked lady.

That night was to be Professor Lingerie's last at teaching life drawing or anything else. He abandoned all his students and threw himself obsessively into the design and manufacture of what he called le convert contre le vent--literally, "the cover against the wind." His supply of paint-smeared white silk soon gave out, however, and he was eventually forced to experiment with other materials--silk Charmeuse, satin, Lycra, nylon tricot, rayon acetate, polyspandex. It was to be six more weeks before he realized that the new materials did not need to be smeared with paint.

Often students ask, "Did Lingerie invent the panty?" Well, he did have a hand in it. Here's what happened. By March of 1724, Lingerie had created a line of intimate apparel that was the talk of Paris. An entrepreneur named Jacques Panty then struck a deal with Lingerie.

Panty wanted to market Lingerie's creations, but he thought the appellation le couvert contre le vent too cumbersome for print ads.

Panty proposed to Lingerie that the new product be called simply panties. Lingerie was livid and accused Panty of being a self-aggrandizing egomaniac. Fearing that he was risking blowing a good thing, Panty quickly recanted, suggesting that an even better name might be lingerie, and the professor perked right up.

To this day, intimate apparel the world over is known as lingerie, and only underpants are known as panties.

Scholars have also been confused about the origin of the term Merry Widow. A few biographical facts will help.

Madame Geneviève Lingerie was the neglected and long-suffering wife of the professor, who spent as many as seven days a week--and often nights as well--laboring in his atelier, creating slips, corsets, chemises, peignoirs, camisoles, teddies and bustiers pampered with princess seaming and Chantilly lace. Designing, cutting, sewing, fitting and altering his creations on the actual bodies of young Parisian models, Lingerie found the hours he was able to spend at home shrinking to an alarming degree.

Indeed, in the seven years following the appearance of his prototypes for the full-cut brief and the demicup underwire bra with front closure, Lingerie was home so infrequently that one evening when he entered their bedroom and prepared for bed, his wife screamed and claimed not to recognize him.

But tragedy was soon to overtake Lingerie. Working late one night in his atelier, the overzealous inventor got his head tangled in the straps of a prototype garter belt he was fitting on one of his young models, and before the startled girl knew what was happening, the professor had turned blue and strangled to death.

When news of her husband's untimely demise reached Madame Lingerie, she reportedly burst into near-hysterical laughter that did not subside until the family physician administered a sedative some 12 days later. Cynical neighbors dubbed Madame Lingerie the Merry Widow, and the name stuck, to be subsequently co-opted by a Hungarian composer of operettas.

Western scholars have long known that the best lingerie has always come from France, Italy and the United States; but recently, the Russians have entered the field and are trying hard to be competitive. I am often asked what it is like and how serious a threat it is to our own.

While NATO nations have always excelled in the design and manufacture of state-of-the-art lingerie, lately, Communist-bloc countries have made serious inroads into what was once a primarily Western industry. The Slavic product is predictably weak on delicacy and sensuality but is effective protection in contact sports, in the operation of heavy machinery and for use by female military personnel in the frigid climate of Afghanistan.

An impressive display of combat lingerie was noted by Western observers in Moscow's Red Square at last year's May Day parade. Squads of grim-faced, solidly built women commandos trooped past the reviewing stand, decked out in canvas push-up bras, burlap bikini panties, garter belts made of industrial-strength nylon webbing and chain-link fish-net stockings.

Although lingerie representatives in New York, Paris and Milan have maintained a public posture of nonchalance and even disdain for the Soviet product, privately, Western manufacturers of intimate apparel are plotzing. They feel that there is a dangerous surplus of lingerie in the market place and that it threatens an already shaky world economy.

Millions of Bolshevik underpants are stored in Russia's northern latitudes, along what has come to be known as the V.P.L., or Visible Panty Line. Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze have agreed to high-level East-West talks to discuss banning all medium- and high-cut briefs from the international market, if a means of effective on-site verification can be agreed upon.