In the flapper era the latest knicker fashion was to wear either the new skirt knickers also known to us as French knickers (but then often open legged) or the closer body skimming fitting Directoire knickers.

Right – French Skirt Knickers Image from a 1920 Copy of Everywoman’s.

The volume of undergarment types available in this transitional era of dress is positively baffling as new forms of underwear were devised to accommodate the shorter and more fitted lines of clothing. Flapper’s Cami-Knickers 1928.

A button and loop or tie fastening added here and there to hold the hem of a chemise underskirt together soon created the chemi-knickers in 1917 and these evolved into new style cami-knickers. Women passionate about equality in this era were just as passionate about abandoning old fashioned underwear styles for new innovative lines and with even newer sounding names.

Right – Flapper’s Cami-Knickers 1928.

Closed Directoire knickers with flap poppers were attached to a camisole and then called cami-bockers. How undergarments fastened usually helped define their retail selling name, but the leg volume of the knickers often made the descriptive differences.

From 1877 onwards the popular Victorian drawers had new competition from combinations. Victorian Combinations 1893. Ladies Undergarment.

Just as today women wear panties, knickers, thongs, briefs, g-strings, boy-shorts, bodies etc., so women sought the perfect underwear for their sense of self in Victorian times. The undergarment competition came in the form of a new underwear item called combinations.

Combinations were first developed as a Victorian undergarment in 1877. They were initially made from linen, silk, merino, calico, cambric or nainsook in flesh pink tones or cream colours. The combinations were made more popular as a style in the late 1880s by Dr Jaeger and his underwear versions were made of fine wool.

Right – Combinations 1893.
All-in-one Combination

The all in one undergarment called combinations, and shown left, consisted of a camisole bodice attached to drawers. Its design eliminated the need for a chemise and the latter versions of combinations were frillier and prettier garments that merged into lingerie, making them more exotic in their appearance. By 1892 other variations made of silk or fine muslin were the preferred fabrics.
Knickers

By 1895 knicker legs became very wide and decorated with frills at the knee. In general the width of the knicker leg was about 20 inches around the knee with a 10 inch lace frill. The knickers were easily accommodated under the wide petticoats and equally full wide skirts of the 1890s era.

Drawers Merge Into KnickersVictorian Ladies Open Drawers 1867 – French cambric and broderie anglaise lace.

In the 1840s Victorian drawers were plain and reached well below the knees. In the 1850s they became more embellished so that by 1868 decoration on knickers was usual. Often the lower leg edges of Victorian knickers were trimmed with lace and had 5 or 6 tucks above it.

Left – French cambric and broderie anglaise lace Victorian drawers of 1867 and still open legged.

By 1876 the drawer legs of knickers merged to become closed. That is, the open nature of the crotch was closed and an opening of about four inches closed by a few buttons existed instead at the side hip.

A revolution had occurred – Victorian drawer legs were no longer separate – they were now fashionable knickers. Fabrics used were changing too and silk, as well as flannel was popular choice for knickers.

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By the late 1870s knickers were accepted and widely worn by women; although as an item of underwear they were never referred to in polite conversation. It was almost as if they did not exist. Often the knickerbockers were made from brilliant scarlet flannel. These fabrics such as smooth fine flannel, and alpaca wool had nainsook linings that could be detached for washing. This style of knickers was fashionable underwear until the turn of the 20th century when suddenly the style lacked daintiness.

Regency Underwear
PantaloonsRegency Drawers 1815-30

The Empire fashions at the turn of the 19th century were often little more than sheer nightgowns. The practical solution to the discomfort of lighter clothing was to simply adopt the warm undergarment called pantaloons which were already worn by men.

Women’s pantaloons were made of light stockinet in a flesh toned nude colour and reached to just below the knee, or even all the way to the ankles. This is why Empire women often appear to be wearing no underwear when seen in paintings of the era. The flesh tone pantaloons acted in just the same way as they do today when a woman wears a flesh toned bra and briefs under white or pastel trousers and top.

Right – Regency Drawers 1815-30

Young women and children were wearing pantalettes under their dresses by 1820. The drawers were loose and made of two leg sections held together with a tie at the waist. Each pantalette leg was decorated with frills at its bottom edge.
Knickerbockers

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The term knickers comes from the book written by Washington Irving in 1809 and called History of New York. He used the pen name Diedrick Knickerbocker. Herr Knickerbocker was supposedly descended from the original Dutch settlers in New York and was lampooned by the well-known caricaturist George Cruikshank. You can see from illustrations in the book that the Knickerbocker men were dressed in loose breeches, strapped or tied at the knee.

From the 1820s onward the breeches were known as knickerbockers and were often used for sports activities. Women borrowed the knickerbockers to wear under their new draughty hooped cage crinolines. Drawers and knickers fashion soon came to mean the same undergarment.

During the Regency era women began wearing lower undergarments. From the 1820s onwards drawers were made of more feminine cotton lawn fabric and laced at the waist. Knickers were quite baggy, which accommodated the split through the crotch, so that despite the opening, the bagginess afforded some modesty when sized correctly.

In her book ‘Knickers, An Intimate Appraisal’, Rosemary Hawthorne records that before 1789 and the French Revolution, long skirts, a petticoat or two, a corset and linen chemise was all the underwear a woman thought desirable or necessary. As the end of the 18th century approached finer lighter fabrics of lawn, sheer silks and batiste replaced heavier brocade and thicker materials. Thus women began covering their lower regions, simply because it was warmer to wear some undergarments in the cool north European climate.

Prior to the Regency era, quilted petticoats along with a pannier skirt had often been an attractive and visible part of a woman’s dress. The fabric used in the skirt was also heavier and the layering meant that the lower half of the body was kept quite warm, furthermore, the heavier cloth used ensured skirts did not billow up.

He made clean linen and washing daily a part of English life.

See him seated before his dressing-glass, a mahogany-framed sliding cheval glass with brass arms on either sides for candles. By his side is George IV, recovering from his drunken bout of last night. The Beau’s glass reflects his clean-complexioned face, his grey eyes, his light brown hair, and sandy whiskers. A servant produces a shirt with a 12-inch collar fixed to it, assists the Beau into it, arranges it, and stands aside. The collar nearly hides the Beau’s face. Now, with his hand protected with a discarded shirt, he folds his collar down to the required height. Now he takes his white stock and folds it carefully round the collar; the stock is a foot high and slightly starched. A supreme moment of artistic decision, and the stock and collar take their perfect creases. In an hour or so he will be ready to partake of a light meal with the royal gentleman. He will stand up and survey himself in his morning dress, his regular, quiet suit. A blue coat, light breeches fitting the leg well, a light waistcoat over a waistcoat of some other colour, never a startling contrast, Hessian boots, or top-boots and buckskins. There was nothing very peculiar about his clothes except, as Lord Byron said, ‘an exquisite propriety.’ His evening dress was a blue coat, white waistcoat, black trousers buttoned at the ankle – these were of his own invention, and one may say it was the wearing of them that made trousers more popular than knee-breeches – striped silk stockings, and a white stock.

He was a man of perfect taste – of fastidious taste. On his tables lay books of all kinds in fine covers. Who would suspect it? but the Prince is leaning an arm on a copy of Ellis’s ‘Early English Metrical Romances.’ The Beau is a rhymer, an elegant verse-maker. Here we see the paper-presser of Napoleon – I am flitting for the moment over some years, and see him in his room in Calais – here we notice his passion for buhl, his Svres china painted with Court beauties.

In his house in Chapel Street he saw daily portraits of Nelson and Pitt and George III upon his walls. This is no Beau as we understand the term, for we make it a word of contempt, a nickname for a feeble fellow in magnificent garments. Rather this is the room of an educated gentleman of ‘exquisite propriety.’

George Bryan Brummell. He died, at the age of sixty-two, in 1840.

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It is indeed a melancholy pilgrimage to view the tomb of that once resplendent figure, to think, before the hideous grave, of the witty, clever, foolish procession from Eton to Oriel College, Oxford; from thence to a captaincy in the 10th Hussars, from No. 4 Chesterfield Street to No. 13 Chapel Street, Park Lane; from Chapel Street a flight to Calais; from Calais to Paris; and then, at last, to Caen, and the bitter, bitter end, mumbling and mad, to die in the Bon Sauveur.

Place him beside the man who once pretended to be his friend, the man of whom Thackeray spoke so truly: ‘But a bow and a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur coat, a star and a blue ribbon, a pocket handkerchief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt’s best nutty-brown wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth, and a huge black stock, under-waistcoats, more under-waistcoats, and then nothing.’

Nothing! Thackeray is right; absolutely nothing remains of this King George of ours but a sale list of his wardrobe, a wardrobe which fetched 0515,000 second-hand – a wardrobe that had been a man. He invented a shoe-buckle 1 inch long and 5 inches broad. He wore a pink silk coat with white cuffs. He had 5,000 steel beads on his hat. He was a coward, a good-natured, contemptible voluptuary. Beside him, in our eyes, walks for a time the elegant figure of Beau Brummell.

I have said that Brummell was the inventor of modern dress: it is true. He was the Beau who raised the level of dress from the slovenly, dirty linen, the greasy hair, the filthy neckcloth, the crumbled collar, to a position, ever since held by Englishmen, of quiet, unobtrusive cleanliness, decent linen, an abhorrence of striking forms of dress.

‘The affectation of a mole, to set off their beauty, such as Venus had.’

‘At the devill’s shopps you buy

‘A dresse of powdered hayre.’

From the splendid pageant of history what figures come to you most willingly? Does a great procession go by the window of your mind? Knights bronzed by the sun of Palestine, kings in chains, emperors in blood-drenched purple, poets clothed like grocers with the souls of angels shining through their eyes, fussy Secretaries of State, informers, spies, inquisitors, Court cards come to life, harlequins, statesmen in great ruffs, wives of Bath in foot-mantles and white wimples, sulky Puritans, laughing Cavaliers, Dutchmen drinking gin and talking politics, men in wide-skirted coats and huge black periwigs – all walking, riding, being carried in coaches, in sedan-chairs, over the face of England. Every step of the procession yields wonderful dreams of colour; in every group there is one who, by the personality of his clothes, can claim the name of beau.

Near the tail of the throng there is a chattering, bowing, rustling crowd, dimmed by a white mist of scented hair-powder. They are headed, I think – for one cannot see too clearly – by the cook of the Comte de Bellemare, a man by name Legros, the great hairdresser. Under his arm is a book, the title of which reads, ‘Art de la Coiffure des Dames Fran04aises.’ Behind him is a lady in an enormous hoop; her hair is dressed la belle Poule; she is arguing some minute point of the disposition of patches with Monsieur Lonard, another artist in hair. ‘What will be the next wear?’ she asks. ‘A heart near the eye – l’assassine, eh? Or a star near the lips – la friponne? Must I wear a galante on my cheek, an enjoue in my dimple, or la majestueuse on my forehead?’ Before we can hear the reply another voice is raised, a guttural German voice; it is John Schnorr, the ironmaster of Erzgebinge. ‘The feet stuck in it, I tell you,’ he says – ‘actually stuck! I got from my saddle and looked at the ground. My horse had carried me on to what proved to be a mine of wealth. Hair-powder! I sold it in Dresden, in Leipsic; and then, at Meissen, what does B02ttcher do but use my hair-powder to make white porcelain!’ And so the chatter goes on. Here is Charles Fox tapping the ground with his red heels and proclaiming, in a voice thick with wine, on the merits of blue hair-powder; here is Brummell, free from hair-powder, free from the obnoxious necessity of going with his regiment to Manchester.

The dressy person and the person who is well dressed – these two showing everywhere. The one is in a screaming hue of woad, the other a quiet note of blue dye; the one in excessive velvet sleeves that he cannot manage, the other controlling a rich amplitude of material with perfect grace. Here a liripipe is extravagantly long; here a gold circlet decorates curled locks with matchless taste. Everywhere the battle between taste and gaudiness. High hennins, steeples of millinery, stick up out of the crowd; below these, the towers of powdered hair bow and sway as the fine ladies patter along. What a rustle and a bustle of silks and satins, of flowered tabbies, rich brocades, cut velvets, superfine cloths, woollens, cloth of gold!

See, there are the square-shouldered Tudors; there are the steel glints of Plantagenet armour; the Eastern-robed followers of C04ur de Lion; the swaggering beribboned Royalists; the ruffs, trunks, and doublets of Elizabethans; the snuffy, wide-skirted coats swaying about Queen Anne. There are the soft, swathed Norman ladies with bound-up chins; the tapestry figures of ladies proclaiming Agincourt; the dignified dames about Elizabeth of York; the playmates of Katherine Howard; the wheels of round farthingales and the high lace collars of King James’s Court; the beauties, bare-breasted, of Lely; the Hogarthian women in close caps. And, in front of us, two posturing figures in Dresden china colours, rouged, patched, powdered, perfumed, in hoop skirts, flirting with a fan – the lady; in gold-laced wide coat, solitaire, bagwig, ruffles, and red heels – the gentleman. ‘I protest, madam

The most admired colours are lavender, Esterhazy, olive-green, lilac, marshmallow blossom, and Indian red.

‘At rural ftes, the ornaments of the hats generally consist of flowers; these hats are backward in the Arcadian fashion, and discover a wreath of small flowers on the hair, ex bandeau. In Paris the most admired colours are ethereal-blue, Hortensia, cameleopard-yellow, pink, grass-green, jonquil, and Parma-violet.’ – September 1, 1827.

Really this little fashion book is very charming: it recreates, for me, the elegant simpering ladies; it gives, in its style, just that artificial note which conjures this age of ladies with hats – ‘in the charming cottage style, modestly tied under the chin.’

They had the complete art of languor, these dear creatures; they lisped Italian, and were fine needlewomen; they painted weak little landscapes: nooks or arbours found them dreaming of a Gothic revival – they were all this and more; but through this sweet envelope the delicate refined souls shone: they were true women, often great women; their loops of hair, their cameleopard pelerines, shall not rob them of immortality, cannot destroy their softening influence, which permeated even the outrageous dandyism of the men of their time and steered the three-bottle gentlemen, their husbands and our grandfathers, into a grand old age which we reverence to-day, and wonder at, seeing them as giants against our nerve-shattered, drug-taking generation.

As for the men, look at the innumerable pictures, and collect, for instance, the material for a colossal work upon the stock ties of the time, run your list of varieties into some semblance of order; commence with the varieties of macassar-brown stocks, pass on to patent leather stocks, take your man for a walk and cause him to pass a window full of Hibernian stocks, and let him discourse on the stocks worn by turf enthusiasts, and, when you are approaching the end of your twenty-third volume, give a picture of a country dinner-party, and end your work with a description of the gentlemen under the table being relieved of their stocks by the faithful family butler.

‘The City of London is now, indeed, most splendid in its buildings and extent; London is carried into the country; but never was it more deserted.

‘A very, very few years ago, and during the summer, the dresses of the wives and daughters of our opulent tradesmen would furnish subjects for the investigators of fashion.

‘Now, if those who chance to remain in London take a day’s excursion of about eight or ten miles distance from the Metropolis, they hear the innkeepers deprecating the steamboats, by which they declare they are almost ruined: on Sundays, which would sometimes bring them the clear profits of ten or twenty pounds, they now scarce produce ten shillings.

‘No; those of the middle class belonging to Cockney Island must leave town, though the days are short, and even getting cold and comfortless; the steamboats carrying them off by shoals to Margate and its vicinity.

‘The pursuit after elegant and superior modes of dress must carry us farther; it is now from the rural retirement of the country seats belonging to the noble and wealthy that we must collect them.

1830 Lady’s Evening Gown – Apollo Top Hairstyle ‘Young ladies wear their hair well arranged, but not quite with the simplicity that prevailed last month; during the warmth of the summer months, the braids across the forehead were certainly the best; but now, when neither in fear of heat or damp, the curls again appear in numerous clusters round the face; and some young ladies, who seem to place their chief pride in a fine head of hair, have such a multitude of small ringlets that give to what is a natural charm all the poodle-like appearance of a wig.

‘The bows of hair are elevated on the summit of the head, and confined by a comb of tortoise-shell.

‘Caps of the cornette kind are much in fashion, made of blond, and ornamented with flowers, or puffs of coloured gauze; most of the cornettes are small, and tie under the chin, with a bow on one side, of white satin ribbon; those which have ribbons or gauze lappets floating loose have them much shorter than formerly.

‘A few dress hats have been seen at dinner-parties and musical amateur meetings in the country, of transparent white crape, ornamented with a small elegant bouquet of marabones.

‘When these dress hats are of coloured crape, they are generally ornamented with flowers of the same tint as the hat, in preference to feathers.

‘Printed muslins and chintzes are still very much worn in the morning walks, with handsome sashes, having three ends depending down each side, not much beyond the hips. With one of these dresses we saw a young lady wear a rich black satin pelerine, handsomely trimmed with a very beautiful black blond; it had a very neat effect, as the dress was light.

White muslin dresses, though they are always worn partially in the country till the winter actually commences, are now seldom seen except on the young: the embroidery on these dresses is exquisite. Dresses of Indian red, either in taffety or chintz, have already made their appearance, and are expected to be much in favour the ensuing winter; the chintzes have much black in their patterns; but this light material will, in course, be soon laid aside for silks, and these, like the taffeties which have partially appeared, will no doubt be plain: with these dresses was worn a Canezon spencer, with long sleeves of white muslin, trimmed with narrow lace.