# Dressing in the Age of Nudity



## Sator (Jan 13, 2006)

Dressing in the Age of Nudity
- or why are you dressed in your underwear?

Ours is an age in which most people wander around happily dressed in their underwear. It may come as a surprise to you that you might be doing just that right now. However, both shirts and t-shirts were originally considered to be forms of underwear. Yet for many people today they have become acceptable forms of dress. Traditionally, a shirt had to be kept underneath a coat with as little of it showing as possible. That is the origin of the rule about always keeping a coat buttoned up unless one wore a waistcoat underneath. As for t-shirts - they were never meant to be seen. Today, people consider it so normal to be dressed in their underwear that nobody stops to consider that is what they are indeed doing. Even the tie is seen by an increasing number of people as a superfluous item of "over dress" thus removing the last vestige which kept the underwear from being worn on its own. It might seem that this cult of undress - indeed even of nudity - is an affliction unique to our age. Surprisingly, that is far from the case. For history tells us that since the dawn of the modern age of dress with the French Revolution, that ours is the Second Age of Nudity.

The French Revolution precipitated a crisis in dress when extravagant court dress was suddenly villainised as the costume of the "Enemy of the People".










Motivated in part by a desire to avoid the guillotine, the upper classes rapidly took to wearing the country dress of the English upper classes, who remained in their country estates, unlike their French aristocracy who congregated around the court of Versailles.

This plate from c.1803 depicts the Frenchman torn between the court dress of the past and Anglomania with its country styled equestrian dress:










English styled country dress vanquished French styled court dress. Ever since then this process of the villainisation of fine dress has perpetuated itself to the point that the only way to avoid appearing overdressed has become to dress in ones underwear.

What is surprising is that this cult of nudity had its first cyclical appearance after the French Revolution. This was an age when an interest in the humanism of the Classical world represented a means of rebellion against the stuffy conservatism of the modern one. The great rage of Neo-Classicism in the arts involved a celebration of the sensual beauty of the human form. The odalisque by Ingres is a typical example:










Fashion took its inspiration from the arts in striving for a nude ideal, which brought out the natural beauty of the human form. In women's fashion it was said, "nakedness dresses woman best". Women wore thin muslin dresses which even today look like nighties:



















Modern commentators never fail to note how many of the muslin dresses could be worn today with only a little modification; so modern are they in their appearance. It was initially considered scandalous at the time. Even a light shower of rain would result in a "wet t-shirt effect" and all sorts of sensual delights would be revealed for all the world to see. It should be added that women wore virtually no underwear in that period. Fashionable young women were found dead in streets from hypothermia after going to attend balls in the cold of London. Women preferred to risk their lives than be unfashionable.

Men's dress was hardly any different. Pantaloons were skin-tight and coats were waisted to the very inch of their lives.














































Even coat sleeves were much tighter and narrower than what we are used to today. Above all styles were based around sportswear - pantaloons, riding boots, and coats with cutaway fronts for horse riding were staples of the man's wardrobe, just as sneakers, polo shirts and baseball caps today. This was indeed the Age of Nudity with its Neo-Classicist delight in showing off the beauty of the human anatomical form.

Everything goes in cycles. The dawn of the Victorian Era ushered in a new age of reactionary conservatism. Frock coats became the main centrepiece of the daytime wardrobe, in severe Victorian black. Moreover, the frock coat had no equestrian or other sporting origin, and soon the riding coat with cutaway front was relegated to the status of the "dress coat" for evening wear, its equestrian origins being quickly forgotten.

It is particularly astonishing how heavily clad women became compared to a generation or two prior:










With the dawn of the twentieth century a new wave of social change swept in. The lounge suit, originally a form of beach and country resort wear, came to be increasingly commonly worn as city dress.

Even as late as the Edwardian era, conservative fashion plates took pains to always show lounge suits being worn in their 'proper' setting at the beach or country resort:










However, this picture of Harrods in 1909 shows that they were fighting a losing battle, as gentlemen started to wear their lounge suits into town alongside gentlemen who continued to only wear proper morning dress in town:










The reaction against the conservatism of the Victorian age resulted in a new casualness, which considered itself adequately dressed in beachwear set the dress tone for the twentieth century. This trend to casualness only became more pronounced as the century progressed. The biggest changes occurred in the 1960s - 70s - the age of student riots and hippies, after which even the lounge suit (beachwear!) started to be regarded increasingly as the monstrous formal dress of the Enemy of the People, as though it were a court suit from the Palace of Versailles. As though to avoid the guillotine one had to dispense even with the beach clothes and strip down to ones underwear. Off went the coat as the shirt and t-shirt were worn openly on their own. As the brick throwing Vietnam war protesters and hippies grew up to become the next generation of portly stockbroker and lawyer they continued the habit of dressing in their underwear, thus blessing the look with a kind of bourgeois respectability.

Modern man has thus been stripped down to his underwear, to live out the nude ideal. We must ask ourselves if the next generation will devise a way of dressing with a greater illusion of nudity than ever before. Or perhaps things will come full circle once more so that the Second Age of Nudity will be supplanted by a new age of conservative reactionary dressiness akin to the Victorian era?


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## manton (Jul 26, 2003)

It's good having you around. You make me seem hip.


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## The Other Andy (Jan 9, 2008)

I live near a college known for it's attractive women, so I kind of hope we move further into the age of nudity. Is that wrong?


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## yachtie (May 11, 2006)

The see-through aspect of this is entrancing. :icon_smile_big:


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## SpookyTurtle (Nov 4, 2007)

The Other Andy said:


> I live near a college known for it's attractive women, so I kind of hope we move further into the age of nudity. Is that wrong?


Not at all, as long it stays with the young and attractive! The vision of granny.......scary.:icon_smile_big:


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## clothesboy (Sep 19, 2004)

Sator,

Thanks for the visuals. Truly lovely illustrations. 

Given the state of physical fitness in the U.S. you can sign me up in your clothing brigade. No one wants to see me in a muslin dress.


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## 16412 (Apr 1, 2005)

The age of mini-skirts was wonderful. T'is a shame to see it long gone. And any self-respecting woman with beautyful legs would wear them. And the best part of the Bible is in the Garden of Eden, the way God made life to be, before the knowlege of sin- they were clothesless with pure enjoyment (can't get any better than that).

Sator is not telling us the whole truth about shirts and underware. Shirts and pants have a history and before that there was none. At one time men wore leggings, these were held up by hooks and eyes (or strings) to the shirts. Since you didn't want your privates and buttocks showing you wore a vest (long) and coat over vest, which is why a gentle man never took his coat off. Then came cod-pieces and flapped fronts and they figured out how to make full back (seat) pants, so the shirt progress from underware to non-underware, although some shirts are still underware; but not all. Today anybody considering all shirts as underware is out of their freaken mind. I like reaqding history, but it needs to be put in its proper context and not mixed in like yesterday is still today. Who knows what the future will be, pehaps no shirt or coat or pants, but things we haven't imagined yet.


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## Rossini (Oct 7, 2007)

yachtie said:


> The see-through aspect of this is entrancing. :icon_smile_big:


Reminiscent of Ikea Knightley in Atonement. :icon_smile:


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## clothesboy (Sep 19, 2004)

Rossini said:


> Reminiscent of *Ikea* Knightley in Atonement. :icon_smile:


Freudian *slip*? :icon_smile:


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## windsor (Dec 12, 2006)

Great post Sator. WA...I am imagining the future and I see clear vinyl clothing.


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## Sator (Jan 13, 2006)

SpookyTurtle said:


> Not at all, as long it stays with the young and attractive!


This was always something of a problem. Even today women well past their prime can be seen running around in frightening tight and short skirts (mutton dressed as lamb indeed). But "nude" fashions were never meant to worn by everyone:










The same goes for skin tight pantaloons:










You really need the figure to show off to wear that sort of thing:


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## 16412 (Apr 1, 2005)

windsor said:


> WA...I am imagining the future and I see clear vinyl clothing.


I hope not. It has already been done and pretty much rejected.

Another question- when did lower underwear come in? And, what did it look like? In the 1840's, there abouts, it had no front to mention.

Sator- Aways like the pictures you post. You have a nice collection.


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## Rossini (Oct 7, 2007)

clothesboy said:


> Freudian *slip*? :icon_smile:


Yes, if only it wasn't deliberate! :icon_smile_big:


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## Sator (Jan 13, 2006)

WA said:


> Another question- when did lower underwear come in? And, what did it look like? In the 1840's, there abouts, it had no front to mention.


I am sure I have seen a mention of it somewhere as being something of a Victorian invention. I would have to look it up a bit to be sure. The Cunningtons wrote a book about the history of undergarments which I have never read.

Until then a gush of wind engendered this sort of result:


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## Scoundrel (Oct 30, 2007)

I know t-shirts, no matter how "fancy," were always considered underwear. However, I didn't know that shirts, too, were considered underwear.



> Off went the coat as the shirt and t-shirt were worn openly on their own. As the brick throwing Vietnam war protesters and hippies grew up to become the next generation of portly stockbroker and lawyer they continued the habit of dressing in their underwear, thus blessing the look with a kind of bourgeois respectability.


Oh, the hypocrisy! Best part of the rant, I thought. How amusing; the "history" invented by the recorders is forever cyclic.


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## Orgetorix (May 20, 2005)

WA said:


> Today anybody considering all shirts as underware is out of their freaken mind. I like reaqding history, but it needs to be put in its proper context and not mixed in like yesterday is still today.


But that's kind of the whole point, isn't it? Today is yesterday, or rather today's fashions are much like what folks wore the day before yesterday. Those who stand in the modern era and sniff--or laugh--at the past are themselves products of it. There is nothing new under the sun.


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## Teacher (Mar 14, 2005)

I thought the Age of Aquarius was actually a few centuries off.


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## Brideshead (Jan 11, 2006)

Orgetorix said:


> But that's kind of the whole point, isn't it? Today is yesterday, or rather today's fashions are much like what folks wore the day before yesterday. Those who stand in the modern era and sniff--or laugh--at the past are themselves products of it. There is nothing new under the sun.


I agree. In Brideshead Revisited Charles says '...my theme is memory.....for we possess nothing certainly except the past...'.

We are all tied to the past through our clothing - the three piece suit, for example, is over 300 years old.

Sator - thanks as ever for the wonderful historical perspective. But have you really answered the point that you may have been a little selective in making out your case?

It is also the first time I have noted a glimmer of 'hope' in your posts - normally you predict an ongoing decline......


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## lovemeparis (May 20, 2006)

*DB suits...*

hummm... this looks interesting :icon_scratch:

sounds like someone we know?



Sator said:


> Even as late as the Edwardian era, conservative fashion plates took pains to always show lounge suits being worn in their 'proper' setting at the beach or country resort:


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## Mendenhall2 (Jan 27, 2010)

For some reason those three guys are giving me some serious Uncanny Valley vibes! Their heads almost look like they were photoshopped in 100 years before photoshop! But I do love the middle guys outfit.


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