Brunette Girl Strips Her Undergarments

• Enlightenment and Industrial Age
The invention of the spinning jenny machines and the cotton gin in the second half of the 18th century made cotton fabrics widely available. This allowed factories to mass-produce underwear, and for the first time, people began buying undergarments in stores rather than making them at home.
Women's stays of the 18th century were laced behind and drew the shoulders back to form a high, round bosom and erect posture. Coloured stays were popular. With the relaxed country styles of the end of the century, stays became shorter and were unboned or only lightly boned, and were now called corsets. Undue binding of a corset sometimes led to a woman needing to retire to the fainting room. As tight waists became fashionable in the 1820s, the corset was again boned and laced to form the figure. By the 1860s, a tiny ("wasp") waist came to be seen as a symbol of beauty, and the corsets were stiffened with whalebone or steel to accomplish this. By the 1880s, the dress reform movement was campaigning against the pain and damage to internal organs and bones caused by tight lacing. Inez Gaches-Sarraute invented the "health corset", with a straight-fronted bust made to help support the wearer's muscles.
The corset was usually worn over a thin shirt-like shift of cotton or muslin. In the latter half of the 19th century, as skirt styles became shorter, long drawers called pantalettes or pantaloons often accompanied the shift to keep the legs out of sight.