15th CENTURY UNDIES!!!

[hsifeng]

I love Katrin Kania's blog, "a stitch in time". Today she posted this lovely info on extant German undies from the 16th c.

Yeppers.

Undies.

*i <3 extant undies*



Aaaanyway. There is an English language article available as well here.

Just filing this all away for future reading and reference.

EDITED 7/6/11: And here is jillwheezul talking about the German language article on these.

EDITED 7/18/12: Due to a recent set of English language articles on this topic, interest has swung back round again on this find. mmcnealy just posted this tidbit on FB. http://www.uibk.ac.at/urgeschichte/projekte_forschung/textilien-lengberg/medieval-lingerie-from-lengberg-castle-east-tyrol.html

Comments

[hsifeng.livejournal.com]

Well shoot.

I was hoping for something more definitive than, “Yeah, these are men’s underpants and we think women wore undies too.” The vast majority of the images that show women pulling on any sort of underpants are highly allegorical (“Who Wears The Pants In This Family?”). The others tend to be women wearing items more of the ‘two piece bathing suit’ variety shown in the image of the German article, and generally engaged in some sort of competitive event. So, who knows if those are really undies, or simply a costume worn for physical competitions?

Damn, damn, damnity damn.

Still gonna sit down and read these. Might find something therein to cheer me up.

*chuckle*

[cantarella.livejournal.com]

The ladies in the two piece bathing suits are actually Roman ladies at the bathhouse. It's a Roman fresco, not medieval.

Yes, the only late medieval pictures with ladies in/with underpants I know of at the moment are the allegorical ones. And these can't be taken as sources, since they show the world "topsy-turvy".

I am quite curious as to what becomes of the "bra" things they have found, once they had time to examine them properly.

[hsifeng.livejournal.com]

I am looking forward to this read!

In the meantime, the images I am thinking of (where women are in sporting events wearing abbreviated outfits that include ‘undies’ - not the ones where they are fighting with a man for dominance) are from some of the Peasant Festival woodcuts from the 16th C. I don’t know if there are any zoomable versions of these images online (they come from a variety of artists all over the period, it seems to have been a popular theme) where the details of the ladies in a race are clear enough to discern. If I recall correctly, the ones I saw this in were available in the Single Leaf Woodcut series and/or “Peasants, Warriors and Wives”.

*scratches head*

You know, I’d really like that photographic memory I ordered for Christmas to show up.

*chuckle*