The chemise seems to have been developed from the Roman tunica and first became accepted in the European Middle Ages. Women wore shifts or chemises underneath their gowns or robes; men wore chemises with their trousers or braies, and covered the chemises with garments such as doublets, robes, etc

Corsets are customarily constructed of a flexible material (like cloth, particularly coutil, or leather) stiffened with boning (also called ribs or stays) inserted into channels in the bolt or leather. In the 19th century, steel and whalebone were favored for the boning. Featherbone was used as a less overpriced substitute for whalebone and was constructed from BBW Lingerie flattened strips of goose quill woven together with yarn to form a distant strip (Doyle, 1997:232). Plastic is now the most commonly used material for lightweight corsets and the majority of poor constitution corsets, whereas spring or spiral steel is preferred for stronger corsets and genereally the exceeding genius corset too. Other materials recycled for boning include ivory, wood, and cane. (By contrast, a girdle is especially made of elasticized fabric, without boning.)