As part of our summer series dedicated to everyday objects, zoom on briefs. This piece of the men’s wardrobe, whose name is almost synonymous with comfort, has made its way practically into the shadow of fashion history.
“ Imagine him in his underpants ». This sentence, launched as advice, has already been heard by some of us before taking an oral exam in front of a tough teacher. Behind the joke, an observation: a man in underwear is always less intimidating than he looks.
But what’s so special – and potentially laughable – about this piece of fabric? Unlike women’s underwear, which has been fetishized throughout their history, men’s briefs have for a long time embodied a form of vulnerability, which can express itself in a certain ridiculousness, regardless of the corpulence of the person who exhibits it. The proof with Thierry Lhermitte in kangaroo briefs in the film The bronzed ones, or Gérard Depardieu in striped underwear in Evening dress. Even Tom Cruise, who is not afraid to expose himself, prefers to put a shirt on his back in order to preserve his star image in the famous dance scene in his underpants. Risky Business.
The word slip has often caused laughter. Who has never wondered what the expression meant: It’s not a panty party! »? The explanations diverge, but some say that this term would rather come from the army and the panties exposed in the rooms once passed the inspections of the hierarchical superiors. But others claim that these mysterious “slip parties” are simply celebrations organized in the slipwaythe slipways of ships, transformed into a nightclub by sailors when they were dry.
“Like ass and shirt”, but without underpants
Beyond the anecdotes, the brief has changed its image over the course of its existence, even if this male underwear has a much less known history than that of panties and other female lingerie. Firstly because the use of the word is relatively recent, since until the 19th century men did not really wear underwear. Instead, in order to protect their private parts, they contented themselves with covering them with the tails of their very long shirts, which they tucked into the trouser legs. A practice which is also at the origin of the popular expression ” be like ass and shirt “.
It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that we began to see these pieces in commercial catalogs, with this name derived from the verb to slip, “slip” in English, because it is an easy-to-put-on underwear. An Anglicism which, moreover, leads to confusion, since in English the word underpants is used in fashion rather to talk about the female nightie, while across the Channel or across the Atlantic, our male briefs are simply called briefs.
But whether it’s underpants or briefs“ at the very beginning, it was a garment worn by sportsmen reminds us Denis Bruna, fashion historian and chief curator in the fashion and textile department of the Museum of Decorative Arts. After all, playing sports with the lower sides of the shirt tucked into shorts was not really practical and the shorts, which already existed at the time, were too thick for this kind of exercise. Hence the creation of this legless boxer shorts, very fitted, more or less indented on the thighs », according to the dictionary definition Treasure of the French language.
But from the 1910s, the underpants left the world of sport to win over the rest of the population, presented as being both practical and comfortable underwear. So much so that in the 1950s, the French army officially recommended wearing underpants rather than underpants, judging its longer competitor a little too loose for soldiers on mission.
However, if the word underpants used to talk about men’s clothing was born at the beginning of the 20th century, certain variants of this underwear existed long before. This is the case of long underpants, whose function was to protect the legs against the cold.
” The men first began to wear breeches, which are large stockings, very tight explains Denis Bruna, speaking of the ancestors of trousers. Therefore, they could not wear very loose underpants. So, there were boxer shorts very close to the body, which looked like either briefs or boxers. When you look at paintings from the mid-15th century, when you show naked or almost naked men, sometimes there is a kind of boxers or briefs, short at the hips, with a front pocket “, underlines the historian. And if we go back in time again, there was also the subligaculum, a kind of fabric protection worn under the togas of men in Greece and ancient Rome. Or again, outside Western culture, shendjitthese linen or cotton loincloths worn in particular in ancient Egypt, which could very well be seen as the origin not of briefs, but of all male underwear.
Show or hide?
For much of its history, panties were something only shown in private. Since the exposure of the male body was not exploited as much by marketing as that of women, men’s underwear remained in the shadows for a long time.
However, all that changed in 1982 when a certain Calvin Klein decided to launch a line of men’s underwear, with very mainstream advertising campaigns, showing young models in lascivious positions and whose actor Mark Wahlberg was one of the most famous ambassadors.
Suddenly, men’s underwear becomes protesting, even statutory objects that we willingly show off. This corresponds to a moment of fashion transformation, inspired, among other things, by urban music, the break dance and the world of skateboard. ” There was this fashion for visible underwear, especially in the 1990s, when very loose pants were worn, baggieswhere we essentially showed the upper part of the brief, with the elastic and sometimes even the underside of the elastic.e”, Denis Bruna reminds us. At that time, even Carrie Bradshaw, the character of Sarah Jessica Parker in the series Sex and the Citywalks around her apartment in white kangaroo briefs.
” Clothing is a code and the code always ends up being upset. The underside should be hidden. So how exactly can we override the code below? Showing it and making a top sums up the historian.
Today, the underpants continue to be talked about. So much so that it has become the business of several brands, who dream of meeting the success of a Calvin Klein. The French designer Ludovic de Saint Sernin, for example, offers it (very) sexy and genderless, with carnations with fetish touches. Others, like the “Le Slip français” brand, play on humour, as in 2012, with the advertising slogan “ The Change (of underpants) is now! “, borrowed from the presidential campaign of François Hollande. Beyond its cheeky communication, this brand relies above all on responsible production, with parts made in France, as its name suggests. A detail that is important when you know that almost all the briefs worn in France are produced abroad. Thus, as a symbol of vulnerability or a source of mockery, briefs end up embodying, in their own way, a fashion that wants to be committed, even in the privacy of our underwear.