Vintage Lingerie Reference Books

For all your vintage lingerie reference books, pictures, or history, please visit my vintage lingerie library where you can buy any of these books here, or click on any of these books below:
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For all your vintage lingerie needs, reference and awesome pictures, I highly recommend these books. I have each one in my library and refer to them all the time.

See Ya Tomorrow! xo

Top 5 Vintage Lingerie Books

 Our Top Five Vintage Lingerie Books, in no particular order: 

Irresistible: The Art of Lingerie, 1920-1980

Slip into something more comfortable as you peruse this comprehensive overview celebrating the art of women's underwear and lingerie. In this elegant display of vintage, collectible lingerie in satin, lace, silk, and chiffon, experience the evolving designs of modern lingerie from 1920 to 1980. From sweeping changes of a woman's role in society to the technological advances that produced a spectrum of new colors and range of textiles, the form and style of lingerie has undergone a significant transformation. Photos, sketches, and vintage ads tell the story behind the designs for bodices, negligees, pajamas, nightgowns, bed jackets, girdles, garters, and more. Ideal for collectors, costume designers, fashion designers, and fashionistas.




1000 Dessous A History of Lingerie

Since the beginning of civilization, women have worn underwear. Justified as protection, or a hygienic necessity, this "second skin" was devised to satisfy perverse erotic instincts. A "trap laid by Venus" to entertain and stimulate the fantasies of both the woman who wears them and the man who discovers them. Corsets, bras and panties are not utilitarian items -- they are elements in a mystic ritual linking man and woman. They act as an obsessive focus for fantasy, for the sex they conceal is powerless without the decorations and seductions which separate us from it. Pleasure would perish without censorship. Women have always known how to stimulate the latent fetishism of the men around them. Under her dress, a Greek girl of the classical period would wear a belt around her hips which was of no practical use except to draw attention to her femininity. Likewise, the women of Rome already wore garters round their thighs, though the stocking had not yet been invented.In our own century, vamps, starlets, pin-ups and models have filled our cinema screens, our advertising hoardings, our office calendars and our imaginations with the erotic engineering of the garter belt and the surreptitious rustle of nylon stockings

Hidden Underneath History Of Lingerie Fashion Art Book

From the restrictive corsets of the late 1800s to the revealing thongs of the early 20th century, women's lingerie has changed drastically. This evolution mirrors changes in society regarding both the role of women and the ideals of beauty. Thanks to such items as the laced, corseted waist of turn-of-the-century coquettes, the uplifted busts of early-1990s supermodels, the sexy lingerie of a 1950s pin-up, and the see-through (or entirely absent) bras of the 1970s, women's underwear has provided the unseen superstructure on which modern canons of beauty have been based. A revealing text by Parisian-based fashion historian Farid Chenoune gives the context for the story of the most beautiful women of the century, while pictures of glamorous icons, as well as lesser-known Venuses, adorn the pages of this sumptuous book.


The Story of Lingerie

What do the thousands of images of bras and panties on perfectly sculpted bodies that we see spread across billboards and magazines say about our society? Many women indulge in lingerie to please men. Yet, since antiquity, women have always kept lingerie hidden away under outer garments. Thus, lingerie must be more than erotic bait. Authors Muriel Barbier and Shazia Boucher have researched iconography to explore the relationship of lingerie to society, revealing the economy and corridors of intimacy. They correlate lingerie with emancipation, querying whether it asserts newfound freedoms or simply adjusts to changing social values. This Mega Square book contains pictures of lingerie from the 17th to the 21st century.


Lillian Bassman: Lingerie

Through the 1950s and the early 1960s, working with that era’s supermodels, fashion photographer Lillian Bassman created the quintessential modern feminine image of women in their lingerie. As Ginia Bellafante put it in the recently, “In place of heavyset women constraining themselves in what was essentially equipment, Ms. Bassman deployed immeasurably lithe models, conveying a world in which women seemed to linger in the pleasures of their own sensuality.” Fifty years later, these images have lost none of their allure, and the enormous cultural impact of the TV show has given them new currency. New York TimesMad Men









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Vintage Lingerie~1000 Dessous~A History of Lingerie

A MUST HAVE book 1000 Dessous.

Since the beginning of civilization, women have worn underwear. Justified as protection, or a hygienic necessity, this "second skin" was devised to satisfy perverse erotic instincts. A "trap laid by Venus" to entertain and stimulate the fantasies of both the woman who wears them and the man who discovers them. Corsets, bras and panties are not utilitarian items - they are elements in a mystic ritual linking man and woman. They act as an obsessive focus for fantasy, for the sex they conceal is powerless without the decorations and seductions which separate us from it. Pleasure would perish without censorship.

Women have always known how to stimulate the latent fetishism of the men around them. Under her dress, a Greek girl of the classical period would wear a belt around her hips which was of no practical use except to draw attention to her feminity. Likewise, the women of Rome already wore garters round their thighs, though the stocking had not yet been invented. In our own century, vamps, starlets, pin-ups and models have filled our cínema screens, our advertising hoardings, our office calendars and our imaginations with the erotic engineering of the garter belt and the surreptitious rustle of nylon stockings.

Dessous traces the evolution of this living mythology from its first steps in the dawn of civilization to its apotheosis in the films and advertising campaigns of the modern world. Lavishly illustrated, it demonstrates how the conflict between the need to conceal and the will to reveal has provided women with the means to explore their own sexuality and exercise an erotic ascendancy over men. The result is a richly aphrodisiacal meditation, an intimate exploration of the props of our theatre of desire.

About the editor and author: Gilles Néret (1933-2005) was an art historian, journalist, writer, and museum correspondent. He organized several art retrospectives in Japan and founded the SEIBU museum and the Wildenstein Gallery in Tokyo. He directed art reviews such as L'Oeil and Connaissance des Arts and received the Elie Faure Prize in 1981 for his publications. Néret's many titles for TASCHEN include Salvador Dalí - The Paintings, Matisse, and Erotica Universalis.

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