PHOTO: Contact sheet by Eadweard Muybridge. Phototype printed in black ink, 1887. 

This famous contact sheet by pioneering motion photographer Eadweard Muybridge reveals the many layers of undergarments that women wore in the late 1800s. Those layers included pantalets, petticoats, bloomers, bustles, corsets, and crinolines. Getting dressed and undressed used to be “an operation to be repeated several times a day so that one’s outfit would always be appropriate for the circumstances,” wrote French fashion curator Catherine Ormen in “French Lingerie: 19th – 21st Century.” These were the height of Victorian times, when women couldn't vote, own a bank account, or straddle a horse cowboy-style (never mind easily liberate themselves from the vice grip of their husbands).

Women were finally liberated from the laborious assembly-line dressing that characterized the times when the corset began to divide in two and the bra was born in the early 1900s. This change was fueled by the First World War, a period when women had new needs,” writes Ormen. “They must actually lead active lives and take charge of the Nation’s destiny. So they forget all the fussy and overdone undergarments of the Belle Epoque.” In other words, women had to roll up their sleeves, forget their bloomers, and get down to work.

The corset was barely mentioned again until recently, 150+ years later, when celebs like Kim Kardashian started snapping selfies in so-called waist-trainers. Now, as the New York Times recently wrote in The Corset Stays the Course (and as all lingerie fashionistas know), the "corset aesthetic" is experiencing a renaissance: whalebones are out, but steel boning and gut-sucking top-to-bottom lacing are in. Are bustles, bonnets, and crinolines right around the corner?