Underpants

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

While the mechanisms employed by men to achieve the effect of a slender waist were not too different from those subscribed to by their women contemporaries, not all small waists were the consequence of corseting. This rare early nineteenth-century example of a man's drawers shows a less draconian mode of waist suppression. A double-layered waist yoke with boning functions as a girdle with adjustable laced tabs.

The Costume Institute

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Costume Institute's collection of more than thirty-three thousand objects represents seven centuries of fashionable dress and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.

Metropolitan Museum of Art