When was underware first used?

Factual Questions
1

As some of you know I’m a Scot, and someone here at my work asked me what we wear under the kilt. Of course its a personal preference now-a-days but the tradition is not to wear any. (Called going “Regimental”.)

She then asked why we do this and I explained that when kilts were commonly worn as everyday dress, underware just wasn’t around. (Wallace couldn’t go to the local K-Mart and pick up a pack of Y-Fronts back then.)

This brought up the question…when were underware ‘invented’?

Thanks!

2

Can’t really help with the question, but I’d like to add here that you can save on laundry costs with the following tip:

Underwear has TWO sides!

Cut your laundry in half!!

Woo hoo!!

3

There have been forms of underwear for as long as there’s been clothes—Egyptians wore cotton sheaths under their clothing. And both men and women in Europe have worn corsets and corset covers since the, oh, about the 1500s.

But “modern” undies—underpants and bras—are about 100 years old. The corset began to devolve in the 1910s and was pretty much reduced to a girdle or supporting slip by the mid-1920s. The modern bra came about in the same decade—first to flatten the figure, then to support (in the 1930s) and finally to shape (the 1940s and '50s).

Men have worn longjohns for centuries, for the cold. So men’s undies—except with kilts, it seems—are nothing new. Women wore petticoats and no underpants till about the 1910s, when petticoats and slips got thinner and fewer. Modern undies for women came in about that time.

—Eve (who used to work at a costume history museum)

4

I remember reading either in Deuteronomy or Leviticus in the Bible that the sons of Aaron and the priests had to wear linen undergarments from their waist t their thighs to stop their manliness being exposed… early Calvin Klines!!!

5

Thanks Eve!!!

6

Anytime! [adjusting her lacy step-ins]

7

Can’t help but reply to this one:

It seems a large group of American tourists were in a small town in Scotland, and one Scottsman was getting irritated by repeated questions about what was under his kilt.
Finally, when he could stand it no more, a very snotty man came up and asked “So, what do you wear under your kilt?”
“You’re mother’s lipstick” replied to Scot.