The Chemise and the Corset Prototypes

During the Middle Ages, nobility wore linen clothes under expensive outer dresses to both protect their expensive clothes from dirty bodies and to provide a layer of warmth. Most noticeably, two enduring pieces of lingerie, the chemise (or smock) and later the corset, were introduced in the fourth and sixteenth centuries A.D., respectively. The chemise looked like a tunic that was gathered into a square or circular neck and was frequently embroidered. Typically women wore a chemise under petticoats and later corsets.

 

The prototype of the corset appears in a twelfth-century manuscript. This manuscript includes a depiction of the devil or “fiend of fashion,” represented as a woman (Steele 2001). The figure wears a tight-fitting bodice extending from the shoulder to below the waist and closely laced up in the front. While the figure is most likely wearing a tight-fitting bodice rather than a corset in its technical sense, the manuscript is notable in showing the increasing focus on displaying the body. In contrast to ancient dress, modern fashion as it emerged from Medieval Europe concerned itself with tailored clothing designed to follow the shape of the body, and women (as well as men) used tight-fitting undergarments to manipulate the shape of their bodies. For example, during the fourteenth century, women began wearing stiff linen under their bodice called a cotte, an early French word meaning “rib,” that flattened the breast. Woman used paste as stiffener between the two layers of linen to create a stiffer, harder bodice, creating the earliest form of the corset (Steele 2001).

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