Old fashioned undergarments

dandy-candy

I love vintage fashion but always think the wasp waists in the 1950s a bit too extreme- they must have been uncomfortable!
I was looking at a magazine from the 1960s and was surprised to see ads for girdles as the fashions looked much more relaxed and lose fitting by then.
When did people stop wearing girdles, corsets etc? Were they as uncomfortable as they looked?

monnagran

Yes they were.

I've not experienced corsets but girdles were the pits. They had suspenders dangling from them with which to keep one's stockings up. These would occasionally pop off leaving one to try and keep one stocking in place with only one suspender while still keeping the seam straight.

Even children were not exempt. There were stifling liberty bodices. They also had suspenders dangling from them to keep up the horrid Lisle stockings that concerned mothers forced their little girls into, in an attempt to keep their little fat legs warm.

Thanks mum. It was a good introduction to the trials of being a female.

Thank goodness for seamless tights.

Hard_Up_Hester

My mil was definitely still wearing panty girdles in the 1970's they were expensive she had 2 and they were worn for a week, she always smelt of wee!

Who remembers Des O'Connor doing the advert for the little X girdle probably by playtex.

trailingspouse

I remember my mother wearing something called a roll-on. It was basically a girdle (but without a gusset) that you literally rolled on, and you wore 'normal' knickers underneath. No idea when she last wore one - I'll ask her!!

I also remember at school (1971) one of my friends still had a liberty bodice (we were 10 at the time) - but she was the only one in the class who's mother made her wear one. The rest of us were relatively liberated by that stage!!

[Deleted User]

Yes I can remember wearing a roll on years ago and they were hot and very uncomfortable ,then stringy suspender belts became the norm ,then thank the lord tights became more and more easier to buy and suspender belts and roll ons were swiftly discarded.I remember buying Talor woodward 'Life-lons which were tights guraanteed to last 6 months without laddering They were around 5/-(25p) which was quite expensive on my lowly left overwage from work of around £2,After my board and lodging to my Mum was paid and my fares to work I had around £2.2.6d left to save,spend or buy what I wanted with.Thats after working a 40 hour week in 1960 Liberty bodices were worn in the winter at school and were very uncomfortable with horrible rubber buttons that done up the front

VJsmum

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pzOCbzt5Jl4

:rotfl:

THIRZAH

My mother bought me a girdle when I was about 14-goodness knows why as I was as thin as a rake. Later on she bought me a panty girdle.
Perhaps she thought they would act as some kind of chastity belt!

LameWolf

JackieO wrote: »

then stringy suspender belts became the norm ,then thank the lord tights became more and more easier to buy and suspender belts and roll ons were swiftly discarded.

That's interesting; before my ill health forced me to retire, I had to wear nylons of some sort for work; if I tried to wear tights, I invariably got a good old bout of cystitis so I wore stockings and suspenders for all those years. Nowadays I don't wear nylons at all.;)

Marmaduke123

Before tights you had to have something to hold your stockings up, so that was either a suspender belt or a girdle. Often the choice was a girdle, to hold your stomach and/or your bottom in if you were well endowed. I think both were quickly discarded after tights became the norm.

As for corsets, I never wore one, nor did my sisters both born in the 1930s. Our mother wore a corset though when I was a child in the 1940s. I don't know when she stopped wearing them.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

When I was 13, I slipped a disc in my back during a PE lesson and it wouldn't get better - the physio prescribed me a surgical corset that I had to wear every day at school (I spent my weekends laying on the floor with my knees up, as that was the only way I wasn't in extreme pain).

Entirely unintentionally, I not only got used to it and found it very comfortable, my shape changed to have a very pronounced waist, so much so that the prescribed one became too big even when fully adjusted - a very old (to me) member of staff took me aside and said that, if I had a grandmother, I should ask her if she still had an old corset, as the boning would help my back and fit me better than anything the hospital could give me, as they didn't make ones that allowed for 'young ladies' - and it would be a lot prettier.

My grandmother had died when I was 6, but there were a couple of charity shops a short diversion away from my walk home from school where some ladies had obviously passed away and the contents of their wardrobes had been donated. I went in one afternoon and spoke to the positively ancient (she definitely was, as she told me she was 94) volunteer at one.

I spent the next three years going to school wearing something that was absolutely beautiful to my eyes - and felt good. I just made damn sure that nobody else knew about it, as the fuss made about girls that wore bras with even a trace of colour would have been a million times worse had they known about the silk and taffeta I had underneath my uniform.

These days, I think I should have stuck with it.

ancientofdays

I was scrunched into a liberty bodice as a very small child, nasty things they were