An Intimate Affair: Women, Lingerie and Sexuality

Even though the holiday gift giving season has come to a close, a good gift idea is never a bad thing (and after all, Valentine’s Day is just around the corner!). This book by Jill Fields, An Intimate Affair: Women, Lingerie and Sexuality is the perfect item for a man or woman that has an interest in lingerie and the history of undergarments.

The book explores lingerie as manufactured garments, cultural icons, and functional undergarments. It touches on a detailed history of bras, corsets, drawers, and black lingerie from introduction to modern day.  Fields also talks about lingerie as presented in the media and the sexual psychology of lingerie brands.

A review on goodreads.com describes the book as, “Jill Fields’s engaging, imaginative, and sophisticated history of twentieth-century lingerie tours the world of women’s intimate apparel and arrives at nothing less than a sweeping view of twentieth-century women’s history via the undergarments they wore. Illustrated throughout and drawing on a wealth of evidence from fashion magazines, trade periodicals, costume artifacts, Hollywood films, and the records of organized labor, An Intimate Affair is a provocative examination of the ways cultural meanings are orchestrated by the “fashion-industrial complex.”