Petticoat
At the end of the nineteenth century the petticoat was a garment that caught men’s imagination and sent shivers down the spines of the young (and not so young), but by the start of the 20th century it had begun to transform slowly into a lightweight veil. Of differing degrees of transparency, it now reveals even more of the body in a game of “now you see me, now you don’t,” emphasizing a woman’s curves. Petticoats can be made of flannel, madapolam, lawn linen or cotton, fine muslin, taffeta, lace, pure silk, or rustling satin. It is naturally hand embroidered with insertions, openwork, satin stitch, sheaf stitch, and all sorts of fashionable stitches of the moment. In the first decade of the 20th century, the petticoat remained relatively unchanged. The first real revolution occurred in the 1920s when Paul Poiret replaced muslin and flannel petticoats with versions in cotton, batiste, and much finer muslin to be worn under short linear dresses or under “handkerchief’or “dancing” skirts divided into segments. Increasingly alluring, petticoats triumphed in real life, literature and on the screen: they were associated with the heroines of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gloria Swanson, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Doris Duranti, vamps and femmes fatales. During World War II, petticoats underwent a “lull’; when central heating faded to just a memory, petticoats were often made from thick cotton or even wool. Silk ones were looked after with great care and kept for special occasions. But once the war was over, women were taken by an irrepressible desire to dress up, both on top and underneath. Ultra-feminine, lightweight sets of underwear became popular, with matching petticoats, panties and bras, that nearly always matched a nightdress, and often a dressing gown too. In 1947, Marcel Rochas began his Fall-Winter fashion show with a model wearing a little white satin skirt with a black lace body: it was a sign of what would become known as the underwear revolution. Petticoats increasingly followed the line of the dress. The French look and the New Look took over, which, both emphasizing the bust, meant that petticoats were cut like a bra at the top, and had pleats on the hips for dresses with very wide skirts, while the straight models were very tight-fitting. To create a tight “wasp” waist, a lace guêpière was sometimes worn over the petticoat, if it was not part of the dress itself (above all in the evening with bare shoulders). The following year, after the guêpière, Rochas created the bustier-guêpière with a little petticoat that was still in white satin, but covered in lace. An example of this type of petticoat was the jupon designed by Lilian (one of the leading lingerie designers of the time) made of lightly starched white batiste or sumptuous and rustling stiff taffeta. It was known as the musical jupon, because “every step is accompanied by a little rustle that will make our men dream like they used to fifty years ago,” according to the press at the time. The classic petticoat returned to being mainly white, made from in lawn cotton or linen, with pastel colors to follow, though the elegant versions were still in black or ecru lace. Next, the petticoat reappeared in satin, pure silk, crepe silk, satin crepe, lace, bias cut, embroidered, scalloped and decorated with lace trims, flounces, frills and inserts; it was sometimes even open at the side and was closed like a dressing gown with a knot. With the arrival of nylon and other synthetic fibers — popular due to their transparency, their crease-free nature (which eliminated the need for ironing), and the huge variety in which they were available — a large section of the young was won over. In the evening, sparks really flew when a woman took off these garments, and she felt a sort of shock that was at first worrying, but research put an end to static electricity. Without striking a blow, the petticoat won the battle against the large bloomers/underskirt presented by Vionnet in the 1950s, but it had some formidable rivals: cami-knickers (a descendant of the combinaison that was so popular during the Roaring Twenties), which were then replaced by the slip (made of special transparent material cut to show off the body) and then the three-piece (bra, knickers, and petticoat) were all extraordinarily successful. But petticoats did not give up the struggle and they returned to the big screen with Cybil Sheppard, Julia Roberts, and Jennifer Lopez. Fashion, in a game of endless revivals, has created petticoats increasingly similar to dresses while dresses have become increasingly similar to petticoats. Shoulder pads, which were once part of the petticoat, have now become a classic piece of clothing. Cadolle, which has provided lingerie to the most fashionable women of Paris since 1800, presents petticoats which are recognizably updated versions of styles popular in earlier eras. Harking back to the Emmanuelle years of the 1970s, the story of the petticoat as part of a woman’s wardrobe continues.