The chemise seems to have been developed from the Roman tunica and first became popular in the European Middle Ages. Women wore shifts or chemises underneath their gowns or robes; men wore chemises with their trousers or braies, and covered the chemises with garments such as doublets, robes, etc. In those times, it was usually the only piece of clothing that was washed regularly.
Corsets were originally quilted waistcoats, worn by French women as an alternative to stiff corsets.(Steele,29)They were only quilted linen, laced in the front,and unboned. This garment was meant to be worn on informal occasions, while stays were worn for court dress. In the 1790s, stays fell out of fashion. This development coincided with the French Revolution, and the adoption of neoclassical styles of dress. Interestingly, it was the men, Dandies, who began to wear corsets.(Steele 36)The fashion persisted thorough the 1840s, though after 1850 men who wore corsets claimed they needed them for "back pain" (Steele 39).
