Intimate apparel, a term in use by 1921, has played a crucial role in the development of the naughty but nice feminine ideal that emerged in the twentieth century. An Intimate Affair, Jill Fields's engaging, imaginative, and sophisticated history of twentieth-century lingerie, takes the reader on a tour of the world of women's intimate apparel and arrives at nothing less than a sweeping view of twentieth-century women's history via the undergarments women wore.
Undergarments have long given shape to the clothed female form while also shaping our understanding of femininity. Fields charts the changes in both the design of these garments and the meaning of intimate apparel in America by closely examining the history of specific garments - including drawers, corsets, girdles, brassieres, and black lingerie - and by exploring the visual world of intimate apparel advertising, the fashion sensibilities and contribution of garment workers, and intimate apparel art. Lavishly illustrated throughout and drawing on a wealth of evidence from fashion magazines, trade periodicals, costume artifacts, Hollywood films, and the records of organized labor, An Intimate Affair is a provocative examination of the ways cultural meanings are orchestrated by the fashion-industrial complex, and the ways in which individuals and groups embrace, reject, or derive meaning from these everyday, yet highly significant, intimate articles of clothing.
