This is Why Women in England Never Used to Wear Pants

​If you had to list just one piece of clothing you would take to a desert island with you, it'd probably be pants - (nice shoes aside, obvs) - which is why it might seem quite baffling to discover that back in the day, women didn't really care about knickers at all.

According to Lucy Adlington's 'Stitches in time: the story of the clothes we wear', Queen Elizabeth 1 only had one pair of pants - and she didn't wear them until her funeral "when one John Colte was paid the phenomenal sum of £10 (INR 947 approx.) to provide her funeral effigy with a corset and 'a paire of drawers'.

In the United Kingdom during the early nineteenth century knickers were mostly considered to be a novelty and "an unwelcome one at that", according to Adlington.

Some considered drawers deplorable for their resemblance to male trousers - back then there was no such thing as a 'thong' - and "women who wore them could be accused of breaking gender roles by masquerading as men".

And then of course there was the belief that drawers were unhygienic and that they were simply another fad brought into England by the French which was excessive and unnecessary.

Seems surprising then that now we wouldn't leave the house without a pair, doesn't it?