Are crotchless knickers just the thing for spicing up your sex life? I took a look at Ann Summers’ huge range of crotchless underwear to try and answer the question.
One things for sure, there’s huge variety, for raunchy nights in and naughty nights of seduction. But where did ‘crotchless knickers’ come from?
Here’s a ‘brief’ history…
A couple of years ago a pair of Queen Victoria’s bloomers went up for auction. They had a fifty plus inch waist, with her embroidered initials and a crown (perhaps in case Victoria left them in the changing rooms after her swimming lesson and couldn’t remember which ones were hers afterwards).
A key (and essential) design feature was that they didn’t join up between the legs. In that era, no one’s did. When you’re wearing a chemise, a corset, a bodice, stockings, multiple petticoats, a dress and various other layers of clothing, pre the invention of elastic, your bloomers had to be rigidly tied on to your waist (under your corset). So your toilet choices were simple – stripping naked or not stripping at all.
Before the 1800s “polite” women went completely commando; only prostitutes bothered with pants (presumably because their legs got colder?). Then came pantalettes, aka “two tubes tied on with string, which tended to come undone and fall off one leg at a time.
Knickerbockers, that joined up completely, started appearing in the 1850s, but for a long time they were considered terribly unfashionable, impractical, and, frankly, unhealthy. By the late nineteenth century knickerbockers were beginning to pick up in popularity, if you were the sort of woman who did “man-ish” things like gardening, bicycle riding or anything practical. But the gentry remained un-keen. Though they joined up underneath, they were difficult to remove, so trapdoors were introduced in the back.
As dresses got tighter and more streamlined, underwear became an all-in-one proposition, camiknicker-style. Some sported trapdoors, whilst some stuck to splits.
By the end of world war one open crotch drawers were on their way out – skirts got shorter and dancing got wilder. Apparently, flashing your parts at the French Diplomats was no longer the done thing – and with elastic becoming readily available, it was even possible to get them on and off with some ease.
Fast forward several decades and we have this in 2018:
So there you go. Kinda takes the sexiness out of it all, doesn’t it?
Sorry.
