I think I’ll stick with my step-in, thanks.

Do not click unless you have hours to spare

But the real fun began when I plunged into the labyrinthine world of the tables of clothing coupon values reprinted in Make Do & Mend, my reference for the Fashion on the Ration challenge. In the attempt to classify every type of garment commonly available to the British public, the Board of Trade sheds intriguing light on the world of 1940s underwear. What, for instance, is a body belt? This pattern at the Retro Knitting Company leaves me none the wiser.

Bestway 629

What, do you suppose, is a bust bodice? A modesty vest? How common were combinations? And how did it actually feel to wear that venerable talisman against the British climate, wool next the skin?

Seems pretty cheerful

Crying on the inside

The 1940s was a time of transition for women’s underwear. Older generations of British women wore corsets — rigid boned and laced garments worn lower than the corsets of the previous century, some of them sporting enough straps and buckles for a Poe story.

Spencer corset, from Corsetiere.net

There was also the corselette mentioned above, and the girdle or roll-on, worn with a brassiere (which was much more flimsy than today’s architectural bras) for those whose figures only needed lighter support. American women’s underpinnings were another story altogether: according to Corsetiere.net, American women were quicker to adopt more streamlined, free-and-easy foundation garments like panty girdles than the conservative and (literally) straitlaced British.

On top of the foundation garment went a bewildering variety of undergarments — step-ins (panties), Directoire drawers (otherwise known as passion-killers — long, loose and elasticated at waist and knee), French knickers (tap pants, loose at the bottom and buttoned at the side), camisoles, vests, chemises, slips, petticoats, camiknicks and combinations. Trying to figure out what was worn with what, and in which order, makes my head spin.

My feeling, though, is that British women probably wore more underwear at one time, at least in winter, than it occurs to most re-enactors and enthusiasts working from American sources to put on. These were women who wore skirts in all weathers — I’ve seen photos of codebreakers ice-skating at Bletchley Park during the bitter winter of 1939-1940, and they are wearing skirts and nylons (or no nylons). Forget the fashions out of Hollywood in sunny California — if you have to go bare-legged in a damp, cold country with no central heating you want layers, lots of layers, and wool. On a day like today, I wouldn’t mind a set of merino combinations myself.

Hygiene standards for underwear seem to have differed from today’s to an extent that may shock modern sensibilities. Mike Brown’s The 1940s Look relates:

Interestingly, a national survey by Mass Observation at this time found that men possessed, on average, one pair of underpants — which suggests that many did not wear [under]pants at all.

And women don’t seem to have changed their underwear as frequently, if this women’s magazine article on the novelty of American laundry habits is anything to go by:

[N]o American girl would ever dream of wearing the same pair of stockings two days running. Few of them wear the same undies two days running either. They run them through with water every night before going to bed, and I can’t help wondering whether the lovely clean feeling that this is bound to give them underneath may not be responsible for their amazing band-box looks.

Indeed. In defense of the Brits, a miserable climate and poorly heated houses do make stripping off your skivvies an uninviting prospect for 10 months out of the year. Plus, underwear was more involved to clean and care for than today’s cotton panties — as the same article goes on to mention, many women’s underpants needed hand washing and ironing after each use. But still…

If you’re wincing at the thought of strapping yourself into a corset like the one above, pity the poor victims of the utility corset (otherwise known as the “futility corset”), like Hannah Wright of Macclesfield:

[T]he boning at the front consisted of three pieces of compressed cardboard. I defy even the most pugnacious cardboard to do anything but follow the shape of the figure it encloses. . . .

A band of infuriated housewives should force Mr. Dalton [Hugh Dalton, Board of Trade president, clothing rationing boss and hence Minister in charge of corsets] into a utility corset and a pair of the best-fitting utility stockings he can buy. I would add a saucy black felt hat for which he had to pay four guineas…and a pair of those ghastly wooden-soled shoes.

He should be made to walk one mile, then stand in a fish queue for an hour. By the end of this time his utility stockings would [droop] from knee to instep in snakelike coils and twists. His corset would have wilted into an uncomfortable, revolting mass of cotton and cardboard. He would find himself supporting the corset, instead of the corset supporting him.

Any insight on how to navigate the confusing world of 1940s undergarments would be appreciated.  Meanwhile, I leave you with a fashion show strangely reminiscent of the party scenes in Tipping the Velvet:

Short stays were fairly common at the turn of the 19th century and are basically the Georgian equivalent of the Wonderbra, pushing the breasts in and up toward the Regency ideal of a rack you can rest a teacup on. I’ve worn Wonderbras, actually, as well as many other kinds of modern architectural bra involving underwires, foam, gel and/or cleverly angled cups. The short stays do a better job than any of them, with more grace and much less artifice. Barring a single discreet pad to correct a slight asymmetry, that’s all me in there.

Sense and Sensibility Patterns is the brainchild of Jenny Chancey, an extremely dedicated American woman who researches extant garments and contemporary sources to produce historical patterns from the 19th and 20th centuries for modern seamstresses of all abilities. Her patterns are wildly popular because they’re simple, adaptable, generously multi-sized and exhaustively explained in the instructions and on her website. I didn’t cry once while sewing this, even though it was my first corset and involved a lot of pattern re-jigging and challenges I’d never attempted, such as sewing bust gussets and stitching together three layers of the same garment while trying to keep all the seams lined up.

I’d also never used boning before. Regency corsets were lighter, comfier and less rigid than the steel-boned, waist-compressing corsets of later eras, so I went with 1/4″ plastic bones from Macculloch and Wallis meant to approximate the weight and flexibility of whalebone. Here you can see what happens when you make the boning channels a little too narrow and have to work the bones in by force, but it was late and I was tired and I had already unpicked and restitched twice that day.

The infamous and somewhat exaggerated image of the corset as an organ-squeezing torture device (“Hold on ‘n suck in!”) didn’t develop until the invention of the metal grommet in the Victorian era. Until then, corsets couldn’t be laced all that tightly because of the tendency of hand-sewn eyelets to tear if too much force was applied. Which makes Keira Knightley’s corset-induced histrionics in Pirates of the Caribbean just that much more annoying — stays from that period actually would have been, if not comfortable exactly, then certainly more comfortable than your average pair of modern high heels. I sewed my eyelets with buttonhole twist while finishing my audiobook version of To Kill a Mockingbird.

The short stays are snug but don’t hinder my breathing at all. They encourage good posture by pulling the shoulders back and down, but although I wouldn’t want to have to do any heavy DIY in them, they’re not prohibitively restrictive of movement.

Now all I need is a gown to go with them.