Translation of: La mécanique des dessous : une histoire indiscrete de la silhouette.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-268) and index.

Medieval fashion, bodies, and transformations -- Puffed out chests and paunched bellies : the broadening of men's bodies from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century -- The pourpoint of Charles de Blois -- "Falsity and pretense" : stuffed codpieces -- Women's undergarments and the submission of the body in the sixteenth century -- The enigma of the iron corset -- Under the ruff -- The ancien régime of the body -- From the doublet to the justaucorps : the male silhouette in the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries -- Whalebone stays and panniers: the mechanics of good carriage in the eighteenth century -- Whalebone stays and corsets for children from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries -- The nineteenth century : from artifice to anonymity -- The corset, essential protagonist of modern femininity -- Crinolines and bustles, the reign of metallic artifices -- Corsets, stomach belts, and padded calves : the masculine silhouette reconfigured -- Contemporary undergarments -- Brassieres, girdles, waspies and cami-panties since 1900 -- Corsets, crinolines, and bustles in today's fashions : drawing creative inspiration from the history of undergarments -- New underwear and notions of virtility in contemporary society.