High! High! (“Higher! Higher!”), shouts a crowd of men gathered on a sidewalk in Manhattan. This evening of September 15, 1954, New York is boiling. Perched on high heels, just above a subway air vent, Marilyn Monroe performs what will become one of the most cult scenes in the seventh art.
Each time an oar passes, a current of air lifts her white dress, revealing, to the delight of onlookers, equally immaculate panties. Two, in fact, the spotlight being so powerful that the Hollywood star judiciously layered in order to protect her privacy. And this is how Seven years of reflection (Billy Wilder, 1955) made this underwear a symbol of desire and femininity.
However, panties were not originally made for women. Under the Ancien Régime, it was, according to Larousse, a “garment with legs covering the body from the waist to the knees” reserved for wealthy class men. This ancestor of pants, which is therefore worn in plain sight, widens or narrows depending on fashion. “Before the Revolution, breeches were so tight that some men were said to be unable to jump over a fence.” tells Yvane Jacob in Ready. History of women’s sartorial emancipation (Hugo Doc, 2023).
Meanwhile, the women are entangled in successive layers of petticoats – up to forty-five. But no panties. At the end of the 18th centurye century, hygienists and other moral fathers finally imposed it on them. First long to the ankles, the panties rise to the knees and button at the waist. It was Etienne Valton, the son of a hosier, who imagined, after the First World War, a cotton version, cut high on the thighs and equipped with an elastic waistband – the famous Petit Bateau panties.
On the podiums too
Because it is above all synonymous with modesty, it is common knowledge that panties are not revealed. It was counting without an areopagus of it girls (those fashionable girls who make and break trends), who, freeing themselves from diktats, adopt panties in the city like others wear pants. Sixties star, actress Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol’s muse, made a pair of tights topped with black briefs her uniform. A silhouette taken sixty years later by the model Kendall Jenner, out shopping for flowers in a Bottega Veneta look went viral.
On the catwalks too, panties are making a definite comeback: worn alone at Miu Miu or Chloé, they are barely more discreet under a skirt or a transparent dress (at Dior, since Maria Grazia Chiuri’s first collection, in 2017, or even at Chanel or JW Anderson). Less provocative than engaging, more suited to fashion shows, photo shoots and red carpets than to subway corridors, this underwear exposed for all to see seems to remind us, both literally and figuratively, of who wears the panties now.
