Underwear: from corsets to bullet bras and back by Eleri Lynn, V&A

Mary ('Patsy') Cornwallis-West (née Fitzpatrick), beauty and socialite, by W. & D. Downey, 1881 (detail) © National Portrait Gallery, London

Mary ('Patsy') Cornwallis-West (née Fitzpatrick), beauty and socialite, by W. & D. Downey, 1881 (detail) © National Portrait Gallery, London

This film from the V&A Channel features author Eleri Lynn as she leads us on a tour of a long hidden world. Eleri’s brief history of shapewear starts with the hourglass and S-bend forms – and steel and whalebone engineering – of Victorian and Edwardian corsets carries on through the breast-flattening bandeau bras worn by 1920s flappers, the New Look underwear of Christian Dior, the conicle bullet bras of the 1950s and concludes with  the arrival of Lycra in the 1960s and the renaissance of corsetry through the new popularity of burlesque.

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