Knickers - Underwear Online

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Knickers originate, like drawers, trousers and underpants, in very simple early two-legged garments first seen in Persia. But they have had a rich history, and are perhaps most memorably associated with a fine invention promoted in the 1850s by a pioneering lady from Seneca Falls, New York state.

The new outfit consisted of a fairly regular bodice, below-the-knee flared skirt and - shock! - baggy ankle length trousers, and was invented by Elizabeth Smith Miller. But it was another forward-thinking female, Miss Amelia Bloomer, who gave her name to it. Bloomer, a journalist and writer, saw the new outfit when Miller visited Seneca Falls and was immediately taken with it. She saw the Bloomer style, as it came to be called, as a smart way to increase women's freedom of movement and comfort. But it caused a furore in some quarters - particularly Britain, where it was seen, bizarrely, as an affront to manhood. Women wearing trousers? They'll be asking for the vote next! But there was no going back. By the beginning of the twentieth century bloomers had morphed into a shorter, more 'feminine' kind of knickers which were popular with young girls but were still considered of dubious morality by stuffy old people.

Meanwhile, there were the other type of knickers, mainly the voluminous undergarments which had until the 1880s been called drawers. Around the time schoolgirls were beginning to wear bloomers, the old linen, lawn and cotton of the Victorian period was being abandoned and knicker wearers were enjoying the luxury of silks and lace. They also began to call their underwear lingerie, and it took on new connotations - linked, perhaps, to the advent of birth control. Though they certainly wouldn’t have called it such, women were beginning to appreciate sexy underwear.

Through the first decades of the twentieth century knickers became more elaborate and decorative. By the 1930s they weren't just changing in style, but in name - pants, panties and then in the mid-1950s, briefs were added to the list of terms for this crucial undergarment. But the original term is still popular today, partly for the slightly playful connotations which it picked up somewhere along the line.

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