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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, large numbers of 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. Colored 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. 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. While "tight lacing" of corsets was not a common practice except among a minority of women, which sometimes led to a woman needing to retire to the fainting room, the primary use of a corset was to create a smooth line for the garments to effect the fashionable shape of the day, using the optical illusion created by the corset and garments together to achieve the look of a smaller waist. By the 1880s, the dress reform movement was campaigning against the alleged pain and damage to internal organs and bones caused by tight lacing. Inez Gaches-Sarraute invented the "health corset", with a straight-fronted busk made to help support the wearer's muscles.

The corset was usually worn over a thin shirt-like shift of linen or cotton or muslin. Skirt styles became shorter and long drawers called pantalettes or pantaloons kept the legs covered. Pantalettes originated in France in the early 19th century, and quickly spread to Britain and America. Pantalettes were a form of leggings or long drawers. They could be one-piece or two separate garments, one for each leg, attached at the waist with buttons or laces. The crotch was left open for hygiene reasons.

As skirts became fuller from the 1830s, women wore many petticoats to achieve a fashionable bell shape. By the 1850s, stiffened crinolines and later hoop skirts allowed ever wider skirts to be worn. The bustle, a frame or pad worn over the buttocks to enhance their shape, had been used off and on by women for two centuries, but reached the height of its popularity in the later 1880s, and went out of fashion in the 1890s.Women dressed in crinolines often wore drawers under them for modesty and warmth.

Another common undergarment of the late 19th century for men, women, and children was the union suit. Invented in Utica, New York and patented in 1868, this was a one-piece front-buttoning garment usually made of knitted material with sleeves extending to the wrists and legs down to the ankles. It had a buttoned flap (known colloquially as the "access hatch", "drop seat", or "fireman's flap") in the back to ease visits to the toilet. The union suit was the precursor of long johns, a two-piece garment consisting of a long-sleeved top and long pants possibly named after American boxer John L. Sullivan who wore a similar garment in the ring.

The jockstrap was invented in 1874, by C. F. Bennett of a Chicago sporting goods company, Sharp & Smith, to provide comfort and support for bicycle jockeys riding the cobblestone streets of Boston, Massachusetts. In 1897 Bennett's newly formed Bike Web Company patented and began mass-producing the Bike Jockey Strap.