The French Revolution: Its Revolt against Underwear

The French Revolution in the late 1700s also revolutionized women’s lingerie. French women begin discarding petticoats, corsets, and camisoles as symbols of French aristocracy in favor of the “un-corset,” or a type of corset without stiffening. In a deliberate return to classic Greece, the birthplace of the freedom that revolutionary France was proclaiming, women sometimes would wear a band wrapped around the body similar to the Greek zoné under slim, high-waisted muslins that echoed Grecian rounded breasts and well-rounded figures (Ewing 1972).

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