Clothes have come a long way since our prehistoric ancestors first wrapped themselves in animal skins. However, you may be surprised to learn many fashions are a lot older than you probably suspect.
For instance, the bridal trousseau is a custom that grew out of the doweries women used to bring to their marriages, which doweries originally consisted of all a woman's possessions --- including her clothes. Corsets were worn by the Minoans --- for the very same reason they were later worn by Southern belles: to mold the figure into a pleasing hourglass form. Undergarments have been around almost as long as their outer counterparts, too, although they've been in and out of vogue over the millennia.
Outerwear and underwear, as well as shoes, all originally served protective and hygienic purposes. However, as time progressed, they also came to have a third function, which they share with jewelry --- to attract the opposite sex. But although it is outerwear, jewelry, and shoes that initially catch the eye, it is underwear that truly claims attention.
In fact, in earlier centuries, it was all the rage for women to be visited and viewed in their boudoirs, garbed in their underwear, while completing their toilettes (in François Boucher's paintings in this room, cherubim assist the love goddess, Venus, to adorn herself with all her finery).
According to an intriguing Harlequin Romance Report conducted worldwide, seventy-two percent of men surveyed in the United States insist they find a woman in sexy lingerie utterly irresistible, and another sixty-four percent wish their own special lady would be more adventuresome in the lingerie department.
Men’s preferences when it comes to lingerie are overwhelmingly in favor of the color black (32%), followed by red (23%). Only fifteen percent of the men polled voted for shades of white, beige, or cream --- despite the fact that this was the number-one color choice of women (26%) themselves.
If purchasing lingerie from a mail-order catalogue, both men (48%) and women (49%) would be most likely to buy from Victoria’s Secret. But while men (16%) would shop Frederick’s of Hollywood second, women (21%) would opt for the softer side of Sears.
As with everything else in romance novels, when undressing characters, attention must be paid to the type of undergarments worn during the time period in which the book is set.
Some authors describe both the hero's and the heroine's unmentionables in great detail, employing their removal piece by piece as a significant part of the love scene.
Other writers, however, prefer to dispense with underclothes and get down to business as quickly as possible, having the hero and the heroine cast away, discard, slip, strip, or even rip off their attire (whence the term "bodice-rippers" in reference to historical romances --- in which heroes sometimes rip heroines' bodices down during a forced-seduction scene).
If you have an overwhelming penchant for clothes, you're known as a "clothes horse," while those who hanker fervently after jewelry are "jewelry hounds." If you own more shoes than Imelda Marcos, then you're a "shoe freak."
And if you've got skeletons in your closet, we really don't want to know about it!
   
   
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