Stories are woven into fabric of our most personal garments from the first loincloths to the intricate layers of shapewear. The concealed world of underwear is capable of expressing individual desire and also aspects of society at large. Undergarments both safeguards and exposes, reflecting our hopes and experiences, Underwear can embarrass and excite, amuse and shame us.

In India you tighten your langoti  which translates to “tighten your loincloth” similar to English saying Grid your lions or Japanese saying Fundoshi o shimete Kakaru translates tighten your lion cloth. Freelance writer Nina Edwards sets out to explore and evaluate the purpose, style and manufacture of underwear, as well as the provoking attitudes from the corset to the thong, undergarments has both hidden social narratives and come to define an era.

From its first recorded appearances a Sumerian terracotta bas-relief showing two women wearing a loincloth and a rudimentary pair of pants from about 3000BC.

The Railway Children waving their red petticoats to stop the train  or Madonna cavorting about on stage during her Blond Ambition World Tour wearing a Jean Paul Gaultier conical bra. According to Edwards Corsets saw “ Women… fettered to express men’s contrasting autonomy. They could afford elegantly dressed, but useless women”. She quotes Annie Hall, played in the film by Diane Keaton who, after Woody Allen’s Alvy Singer gives her a sexy negligee, says :”Are you kidding? This is more like a present for you”. The corset is also presented  as a forerunner of plastic surgery, painfully contorting bodies ( men’s and women’s) to fit the silhouette of the day. There are references including the Kimono’s origin in the kosode, an undergarment; Sharia’s Law’s requirements for modest underwear, or the kachera worn by the Sikhs (“intended to be modest and avoid lust”, its Nara drawstring “acting as a means of controlling sexual desire”).

She also discusses changing attitudes of modesty: “Bra straps and boxer short elastic are largely acceptable, but an escaping testicle is generally frowned upon”.

In future we may be less bolder, slimmer, less self conscious, more desirable, truer to our own hidden nature”.

The book rewards the reader with historical insights into both women’s and men’s underwear and global cultures of dress.

The Virtues of Underwear: Modesty, Flamboyance and Filth by Nina Edwards Reaktion £20 , 224 pages.