No fabric has a more sensual association than silks and satins. These luxurious materials are prized stimulators of male hormones and are linked to a myriad of fetishes and fantasies, especially when manifested in women’s bras and panties. However, this erotic combination is a relatively recent phenomenon. Although silk was discovered 5,000 years ago and satin has been produced for about a thousand years, women have been wearing panties for less than two hundred years, and the bra was invented just over a century ago.

Some men experience sexual arousal just from the look or feel of items made of silk or satin. While this interest is usually directed toward the person wearing the glamorous garment, the stimulation is enhanced by the garment itself or by the look or feel of the material. The attraction may lie in the physical properties of the fabric, such as softness, smoothness, and shine, as well as its association with elegance, glamour, and romanticism. The most erotic materials are considered charmeuse silk and satins. Charmeuse silk has a shiny, reflective satin sheen on one surface only, the other side is smooth and dull, while satin has its shine on both surfaces. Satins are also made from fibers other than silk, such as polyester and nylon, but some definitions insist that true satin is made from silk only.

Although upper-class women were undoubtedly admired for their silk and satin outerwear throughout the centuries, it is only in relatively recent times that the use of undergarments has brought these luxurious fabrics into more intimate contact. with the skin. Women had to wait until the early 19th century before pantyhose (breeches) became widely worn, and for many years they were made solely of wool and flannel. In Victorian times, they were certainly not meant to be seen in public, but by the late 1860s, it was reported that silk joined flannel as the material of choice for knickers.

Women had to wait even longer for the pleasure of wearing a silk bra. There was even a time in the 14th century in France, when women were suppressed by a law that said ‘no woman shall bear the bust’. However, by the end of the 19th century, things had changed and a French corset maker, Herminie Cadolle, invented the ‘Bien-être’, which means ‘Well-being’. For the first time, the breasts were supported from above instead of being pushed up by a rigid corset. Sixteen years later, Marie Tucek invented the ‘Breast Supporter’ and patented it in New York in 1914. Appropriately given a French name, brassiere (upper arm), it incorporated the modern features of separate cups, hook closures, and straps for shoulders.

In the 1920s, women could enjoy the comfort and glamor of modern undergarments and men could enter an exciting new phase of erotic fantasy. But in the five thousand year history of silk, this was only the latest in a long series of evolutionary stages through which it has enhanced the beauty and allure of countless generations of women.