This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Negligee is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
The negligee (or négligée, literally meaning "neglected" -- French: négligé) is a form of womenswear intended for wear at night and in the bedroom. It is a form of nightgown; first introduced in France in the 18th Century, where it mimicked the heavy head-to-toe style of women's day dresses of the time.
By the 1920s it began to mimic women's satin single-layer evening dresses of the period. The term "negligee" was used of a Royal Doulton run of ceramic figurines in 1927, showing women wearing what appears to be a one-piece knee-length silk or rayon slip, trimmed with lace. The word comes from the French négliger, meaning to neglect, to disregard or to overlook. Although the evening-dresses style of nightwear made moves towards the modern negligee style (translucent bodices, lace trimming, bows - exemplified in 1941 by a photo of Rita Hayworth in Life), it was only after World War II that nightwear changed from being primarily utilitarian to being primarily sensual or even erotic; the negligee emerged strongly as a form of lingerie.
Modern negligees are often much looser and made of sheer and semi-translucent fabrics and trimmed with lace or other fine material, and bows. Multiple layers of fabric are often used. The modern negligee thus perhaps owes more to women's fine bedjackets or bed-capes, and up-market slips than to the nightgown. It spread to a mass market, benefiting from the introduction of cheap synthetic fabrics such as nylon and its finer successors. From the 1940s to the 1970s, the trend was for negligees to become shorter in length (e.g. the babydoll of the 1970s). Negligees made from the 1940s to the 1970s are now collectible vintage items.
In the UK at 2004, negligees account for only four per cent of women's nightwear sales, women's pajamas having dominated since the mid 1980s. However, UK negligee sales are said to have been the fastest increasing sector of the market since 1998.[1].
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 19 October 2008, at 19:27.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Negligee".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.