ITEMS OF CLOTHING

UNDERWEAR

THE CHEMISE

BREASTCOVERINGS

UNDERPANTS

HOSE & GARTERS

Breast Coverings
A question of supporting the female form

Many will be surprised to know that underwear, particularly items to enhance or repress the bustline is not an altogether new phenomenon only devised in the last few hundred years. Any large-breasted woman could certainly feel that her forebears would have encountered the need for comfort and support that she herself feels today. Bust support may go as far back as antiquity. A female terracotta figure from Crete dated at 2000 BC shows the first recorded bodice that lifts the bare bosom up not unlike a corset.

The image at right shows a mosaic of female athletes wearing breast coverings to support the bust dating from 400 AD.

Upper underwear of the ancients
Early in the first century, Pliny the Elder speaks of women's breast bands as a medicinal cure, stating "I find that a woman's breast-band tied round the head relieved headaches." Whether it did on not, the garment in question clearly is a band of some kind designed to be worn around or on the breasts. The breast band known as the "strophium" mentioned in William Smith's article in "A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities" by John Murray, London, 1875 is described:

"was a girdle or belt worn by women round the breast and over the inner tunic or chemise (Non. XIV.8: tereti strophio luctantes vincta papillas, Catull. LXIV.65). It appears from an epigram of Martial (XIV.66) to have been usually made of leather (Becker, Gallus, vol. I p321).a. Writing 500 years later, although with an eye to old customs, Isidore says the strophium is of gold and jewelled (Orig. XIX.33.3)."

In ancient Greece, several female statues distinctly wear a crossed band over the shoulders and breast suggesting bust support. The statue of the charioteer at Delphi is one example. In literacy, notably "Iliad" and "The Odyssey" women's underwear is mentioned. A later Hellenistic writer Lacian also wrote of bands for the breasts. In these texts, women are described as wearing a band of linen around the waist and lower torso to shape and control them called a zoné. Other Greek words appear to describe women’s breast coverings, including apodesmos (a band, breast band or girdle), mastodeton (breast band) to flatten the bust and mastodesmos (breast band).

Roman terms describing bands for the bust include mamillere and fascia, both being tight bands of cloth designed to support the breasts. The Roman poet Martial describes a cestus, which was similar to the Greek zoné only wider. Cicero also mentions a strophium.

While not much is written from then until later times, it is not altogether unreasonable to assume that women maintained an interest in support (for larger ladies) and enhancement (for smaller ones).

Support for medieval bust support
During the Middle Ages, nobility wore linen under expensive outer clothes to both protect their expensive clothes from the sweat and odour of bodies and to provide an extra layer of warmth. Underdresses were cut exceedingly fitted and were tightly laced to provide support even for a large breast. Garments such as these would render further bust support in the form of another item of clothing completely necessary.

During the fourteenth century, women whose means permitted them to do so began wearing stiff linen under their bodice called a cotte, a French word meaning “rib", which was designed to flattened the breast. According to Steele,

"woman used paste as stiffener between the two layers of linen to create a stiffer, harder bodice, creating the earliest form of the corset."

Corsets do appear in some early household accounts of Edward the Black Prince but these seem to be an entirely different type of garment, discussed on the corset page. The corset or any other undergarment as we know it today, should it have existed in the medieval period, was certainly known under another name, which is still not known. The early renaissance brings us the garment known as a "pair of bodies", a laced undergarment similar to our corset today.

In Umberto Eco's book, "Art & Beauty in the Middle Ages", he writes that Gilbert of Hoyt defined the correct dimensions of the female breasts if they are to be truly pleasing. In the "Sermons in Continuum Salomonis" he reminds us of the ladies of medieval miniaturists, their tight "corsets" binding and raising the bosom. When the word "corset" is used in this sense, it is unclear whether this is the modern translation for the word he used originally. He writes:

"The breasts are most pleasing when they are of moderate size and eminence...they should be bound but not flattened, restrained with gentleness but not given too much licence."

In is book "Love Locked Out" by James Cleugh, the author, states in his chapter on Priveledge, that "the breasts were accentuated, as in modern times, by well stuffed leathern pouches", although he fails to state his source for this. I have not seen any other reference to breast stuffing to support this claim, although tight lacing to enhance the figure seems to be not unlikely. It is also unclear whether this was a widespread phenomenon or whether it was restricted to ladies of ill repute.

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