When Hailey Bieber and her whale tail rolled up to the 2019 Met Gala, I gasped. In my memory, a thong hadn’t graced a red carpet like that in decades. Somewhere out there Christina Aguilera was getting flashbacks.
Hailey’s g-string sounded an alarm heard around the world. A new (old) era was upon us.
They say nothing in life is certain except for two things: death and taxes. But there’s a third thing that’s equally as constant and unchanging: fashion is always cyclical.
Let’s leaf through the 2020s thus far:
Gen Z TikTokers flaunt thrifted low rise jeans. Influencers like @veryharryhill have opted to document their lives with digital cameras. Think pieces have been written about the “Going Out Top.” Techno and trance club beats are back. Paris Hilton is wearing velour tracksuits again.
In short, undergarments are more visible than ever before. Y2K fashion is back.
In fact, just last week the Miu Miu Fall/Winter 2023 show was heavily centered around underwear. Sheer dresses allowed for glimpses of underwear underneath, intricate stoned undies lay on top of pants, and bold hosiery peaked above skirts.
As it stands, the days of trying to avoid VPL are over. Visible Panty Lines are in. So what does that mean for us regular non-Miu Miu muses? And how did we actually get here?
Wearing underwear like outerwear didn’t necessarily kick off with Xtina. For that, we have to travel back in time. W Magazine cites the 1700s, the era during which Vigée Le Brun’s portrait of Marie Antoinette wearing a chemise dress scandalized the nation.
A flowy undergarment depicted on the Queen was so shocking that the artist was asked to remove the portrait from her exhibition. But it didn’t stop the look from spreading through France and beyond.
Since then, visible undergarments have poked in and out of fashion in different forms. The 1920s saw dress hems being raised by glitzy flappers. Hosiery took the world by storm — with the most playful of flappers rolling their stockings down low enough to expose their knees or show off their garters.
Come the 1950s, the t-shirt moved away from being an undershirt for men to being its own standalone wardrobe piece. Thanks to actors like Marlon Brando and James Dean who wore their tees without a dress shirt on top, we now count the t-shirt as a closet staple.
A few decades later, Vivienne Westwood would continue to turn things inside out by reintroducing the corset as a piece of outerwear in the ‘80s. I mean, COME ON! A visionary.
Enter the ‘90s, when Madonna (as she often does), changed everything.
Designed by Jean Paul Gaultier, Madonna’s instantly infamous cone bra was designed for her Blond Ambition Tour, and was enormously symbolic. It was a huge FU to those calling for a boycott after Madonna mixed themes of sexuality with Catholic imagery in her “Like A Prayer” music video.
The cone bra was Madonna’s chemise dress, as it was the rolled stockings of the ‘20s — an “underwear to outerwear” moment that responded to (and pushed the boundaries of) what society deemed to be acceptable for women.
People thought Madonna’s sexuality did too much. But instead of hiding, she put her sexuality on display with the help of a piece of clothing traditionally meant to be hidden.
From there, the floodgates opened.
Throughout the rest of the ‘90s and early 2000s, clothes got smaller and jeans got lower. And the thong? Well, naturally, the thong emerged as a staple accessory for every It Girl out there.
Although the high-waisted jean trend that followed made the whale-tail disappear, it’s back thanks to fashion's cyclical nature.
It hasn’t just stopped at thongs though. This time around, every type of undergarment is being thrust into the spotlight — even tighty-whities.
Exposed underwear dominated the biggest red carpet event of the year too, with our Knix queen Ashley Graham baring all in a pair of not-so-hidden black undies at the Oscars. We bow!
BUT ISABELLA, you yell at me through the screen, these are MODELS! THESE PEOPLE HAVE STYLISTS! I can’t pull this off!
Okay, first of all shhhhh angel! And second of all, you definitely can — and you don’t have to pull your g-string from 2002 out of storage to do so.
If you want in on the trend, do what feels good to you. As the weather gets warmer, you can experiment with spotlighting your undies in different ways.
Ditch your slips and pair your sheer skirts or summer dresses with a sleek pair of high rise underwear à la Ashley Graham. Grab a lacy bra and design a look centered around it, playing with layers as you go. Let a bold coloured pair of underwear peek above your jeans. Heck, wear a pair of boxer-briefs as shorts.
If you feel compelled to have a little g-string moment, go for it — the underwear world is your oyster yet again. Do it for Xtina, you've got this.