What the 70s taught us about underwear

By the Pantybase team · 7 min read

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Feathered hair. Flared jeans. And panties that were quietly, defiantly, having the most interesting decade of the entire 20th century. Pull up a macramé chair. We're going in.

The 1970s didn't just change what women wore on the outside — they rewired the whole idea of what wearing underwear meant. It was a decade of contradictions: political fury and disco excess, natural fibers and synthetic everything, high-waisted granny briefs that gradually gave way to hip-hugger and bikini styles — all sharing drawer space with the very first thong. If you want to understand modern underwear, you have to understand the 70s.

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The vibe: free, easy, and done with control

Before the 70s fully arrived, women were still navigating the wreckage of the girdle era. The 50s and 60s had been obsessed with shaping, smoothing, and cinching the female body into idealized silhouettes. By 1970, women were over it.

The second-wave feminist movement had been building through the late 60s, and its energy flowed directly into the closet. The marketing angle of the day was underwear that felt barely there. Lacy lingerie took on a new sophistication, and shapewear began prioritizing comfort alongside aesthetics. The girdle was quietly retired to the back of the drawer. And for the first time in generations, the goal wasn't to reshape the body — it was to move freely inside it.

The 1968 Miss America protest set the tone — where girdles and other items were thrown into a "Freedom Trash Can" on the Atlantic City boardwalk. Nobody actually burned anything. But the message was clear: women were done being shaped by other people's standards.

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The silhouettes: from granny brief to bikini

High-waisted granny panties were the underwear style of the early 1970s. Gradually the waistline lowered to hip-hugger and bikini styles — colorful cotton panties as well as silky nylon options could be found in most department stores.

The decade didn't stay modest. As hemlines shifted and body consciousness grew, waistlines dropped further. By the mid-70s, the bikini brief was everywhere — the first time a majority of American women were wearing something that actually revealed where the hip ends and the leg begins.

And then, in 1974, something happened that would eventually change everything.

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The moment: Rudi Gernreich and the birth of the thong

Los Angeles had just banned nudity on its beaches. Austrian-born designer Rudi Gernreich — already known for designing the first topless monokini in 1964 — responded by designing and naming the first thong bathing suit, a unisex design that exposed the buttocks while technically complying with the new law.

His thong was launched alongside a matching Vidal Sassoon hairstyle, and New York Magazine called it, delightfully, "a triumph of dialectic." The whole thing was very, very 70s.

To this day, Gernreich is considered the modern thong's inventor — both the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in New York and the V&A in London have a version of the Gernreich thong in their permanent collections. The man invented a garment that billions of people now own, as a political act, in response to a city ordinance. Iconic doesn't begin to cover it.

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The fabrics: cotton's comeback and nylon's moment

The 70s were a fabric identity crisis — and an interesting one. Nylon had dominated since the 50s: smooth, quick-dry, easy to care for. By the 1970s, cotton gussets were being added to nylon briefs for comfort and better hygiene — a small but meaningful shift toward actually thinking about what underwear felt like against skin.

At the same time, cotton was experiencing a cultural rehabilitation. "Natural" became a loaded, meaningful word. The back-to-the-land movement, the rejection of synthetic everything — it all bled into the lingerie drawer. Natural fabrics like cotton became acceptable — even desirable — for use in designing lingerie, and prints became more classic. Buying cotton was a whole philosophy.

Seamless styles also emerged during this period, providing a smooth, streamlined silhouette. Women were finally free to move around — and their underwear was starting to catch up.

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The culture: what the world was wearing and why

You can't talk about 70s underwear without talking about the politics swirling around it. The ERA was debated all decade. Ms. Magazine launched in 1972. Title IX passed the same year. Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Women were gaining legal footing and making choices — including underwear choices — that felt connected to something bigger.

As women became more empowered, going braless became a symbol of freedom. Most women still wore bras — but the fact that it was a choice was new, and it mattered. Bra styles adapted: softer, lighter, non-structured. The bullet bra of the 50s was long gone.

Then there was disco. By the mid-to-late 70s, the culture had pivoted from protest to Studio 54, and underwear followed. Satin. Shine. Body-skimming silhouettes that made visible panty lines a whole new concern. The tension between comfort and glamour that defines underwear to this day really crystallized in this decade — between two very different women in two very different rooms.

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Famous moments, in brief

1968 — The Miss America protest's Freedom Trash Can — filled with girdles, bras, and high heels — sets the tone for the decade. The women's liberation movement becomes a household conversation. Underwear becomes political.

1972 — Ms. Magazine launches. Gloria Steinem becomes one of the most recognized faces in America. The feminist conversation goes mainstream, and so does the idea that women's bodies — and what they put on them — belong to women.

1974 — Rudi Gernreich invents the thong as a direct response to Los Angeles banning nudity on its beaches, launching it alongside a Vidal Sassoon haircut. The modern thong is born as an act of defiance dressed up as a swimsuit.

1977 — Saturday Night Fever hits theaters. Disco is at peak cultural saturation. The satin, body-skimming aesthetic filters into everyday dressing — and into the drawer.

1978 — Gernreich's thong design is produced by Lily of France as an underwear piece — not just a bathing suit. The seed is planted for what becomes one of the bestselling underwear styles in history.

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What the 70s left us

The 70s didn't just give us wide-leg trousers and Fleetwood Mac. They gave us the foundation of modern underwear logic: the idea that what you wear underneath should make you feel good, not conform you to someone else's silhouette. That cotton is not a consolation prize. That there's room in one drawer for the practical and the gorgeous.

And that underwear, small as it is, has always been a place where women — quietly, and sometimes loudly — make up their own rules.

Honestly? Not much has changed. We're still doing exactly that.

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The revolution was always in the details.