Figure 1.-- An important American manufacturer of underwear was Nazareth, named for the eastern Pennsylvania town where the factory was located. Nazareth underwear was popular with mothers who purchased children's school clothes (rather like Hickory garters manufactured by Stein). Here we have te top (shirt) part of a Nazareth waist union suit.

Vintage undewear is often the rarest type of vintage clothes, especilly before the 20th century. This is probably they were more soiled than other garments and had little sentimental value. Ironically the vintage underwear is particularly important because there is very little we can draw on from the public record. We note both underwear and support garments. We have only limited underwear items in our vintage clothing archive. Underwear were garments that were especially likely to be discarded. Underwear could be quite complicated in the late 19h and early 20th century. Images of actual vintage underwear adds to the informaton we have collected in the catalog section. We note what looks like an underwaist dating from the early 20th century. One readers has sent us an image of a nainsook suit which was worn by American children in the 1930s. We note short-leg long johns which look to date to the 1930s. We also note a German World War I paper-fabric Leibchen which was a kind of stocking supporter. We note a cloth Leibchen a few decades later in the 1940s or early 50s.

Importance Source of Information

Vintage undewear is often the rarest type of vintage clothes, especilly before the 20th century. This is probably they were more soiled than other garments and had lottle sentimental value. We have only limited underwear items in our vintage clothing archive. Underwear were garments that were especially likely to be discarded. Thuis is unfortunate because while photography provides a wealth of information on outer clothes, it tells us almost nothing about underwear. As a result, we tend to know relatively little about period underwear. Thus vintage underwear is important to understand how children were dressed. Underwear could be quite complicated in the late 19h- and early-20th century and different to modern underwear. Thus vintage underwear provides a great deal of useful information.

Chronology

Holding Up

When people began wearing underwear, there was an immediate problem, at least with underpants which we believe was the first underwear garment. This was how o hold underpants up. The answer was strings tied to other clothing. The drawstring, as a concept, appeared in ancient times, but was used for bags rather than clothing. Various civilizations used cords or strings to secure bags. We believe the use in clothing was much more limited, but there is something much more limited. The specific invention of the modern drawstring, a cord threaded through a casing to restrict or tighten an opening is so ancient that there is no actual date or inventor. The use of drawstrings became much more common during the medieval era, especially for clothing. Here the increasing use of pouches and hoods were a factor. Another medieval development was the invention of buttons. People today probably can't conceive of buttons in underwear, but buttons an button's were very common for centuries. This mean that dressing up in the modern was complicated, especially for children. This must have made getting dressed a bitbof an ordeal. Younger children would have needed help to a older age than modern children. Here we are talking about children in America and the advanced countries of Western Europe. Children in many other countries did not face these complication because they were nor as well dressed. The variety of traditional dress styles around the world make this difficult to assess. Outside the few most advanced countries, as far as we can tell, most children around the world did not wear underclothes. This may have been different for the wealthy elite, but seems to have been the case for the vast majority of the population. Modern underwear did not appear until the 20th century and this is because of elastic. Underpants today are imaginable without elastic. We see elastic being used for boxing trunks (1925). Here we are talking about pugilists. And gradually we see companies offering underpants held up with elastic, first boxers and the new briefs (1930s).

Underwear Garments

Underwear was garments worn for various purposes, including comfort, sanitation, clothing care, warmth, and modesty. Clothing was minimal, but imprtant given that the earlt-riverl valley civilzatiobs were in warm lcations. We thought that underwear might be a fairly modern invebron, but in fact archeologits have found underwear from a very early point in civilization (5000 BC). And for most of the histry of human clothing, underwear was kept in place by string. Eventually the draw-string was invented which became very important. We see buttons appearing in the medieval era. There are three basic types of underwear garments: shirts (vests), pants, and union suits combining tops and bottoms (shirts and pants). Styles and conventions have changed considerably over the years. Actual vintage underwear adds to the informaton we have collected in the catalog section. Underwear also began used as support garments. We have found more support garments than underwear. This is important because these garments have disappeared and are thus so poorly understood by modern readers. There were several different types of support garments. These garments became very common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Of less importance are children's posture garments. They were less important for children than adult ladies. Some garment support garments, however, were marketed with claims of posture benefits.