Where to Watch/Listen
Watch on YouTube Listen on Spotify
Key Takeaways
- Underwear has been a status symbol across virtually every civilization in human history
- The materials and design of your undergarments were often dictated by law — not personal preference
- From samurai honor codes to Egyptian royalty to Roman standardization, men have always taken this garment seriously
- The modern Y-front brief didn't arrive until 1935, and when it did, it caused a near-riot in a Chicago blizzard
- This is Part 1 of 2 — next week covers the modern evolution of the pouch system
It Started With a Loincloth
If you travel far enough back in history — Aztec Empire, ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, feudal Japan — you'll find that men across wildly different cultures arrived at the same basic solution: take a piece of fabric, wrap it around the relevant area, and make it mean something.
That last part is the interesting bit. Because it always meant something.
Whether it was the tassels on an Aztec Maxtlatl, the thread count of an Egyptian pharaoh's linen, the standardized cut of a Roman soldier's subligaculum, or the knotwork on a samurai's fundoshi — underwear has never been just underwear. It has been a declaration. A signal. A status symbol stitched directly into the garment closest to your body.
Chris breaks all of this down in what he accurately describes as "quite the rabbit hole."
The Aztecs: Underwear Was the Law
In the Aztec Empire, what you wore underneath wasn't a personal style choice. It was legally mandated. Commoners wore fabric made from ayate — a rough cactus fiber. Only the elite were permitted to wear fine cotton. The embroidery, the designs, the tassels on your loincloth communicated your rank, your station, and your worth in the social hierarchy.
Get the tassels wrong — wear something above your station — and the consequences could be severe. As Chris puts it: "If you had one of these super decorated loincloths, you could possibly be executed."
And if an enemy captured your loincloth in battle? That was considered a way of unmanning you and claiming your spirit. The garment carried that much weight.
Egypt: The Chief of Laundry Was a Real Job Title
The Egyptian loincloth — the Shenti — followed a similar logic. The finer your linen, the higher your rank. For pharaohs and high nobility, the linen could be woven so finely it was described as "woven air" — nearly transparent, impossibly soft.
King Tutankhamun was buried with approximately 145 loincloths. Because why enter the afterlife underprepared? The pharaoh's household even included a dedicated "Chief of Laundry" — a title that sounds ridiculous until you remember that this person was essentially managing the literal fabric of royal dignity.
At the other end of the spectrum, slaves were relegated to the coarsest available materials, or in some cases, nothing at all.
Remote Tribes: When You Don't Have Textiles, Improvise
Not every civilization had access to woven fabric. Some remote tribal communities used gourds — yes, actual gourds — shaped and tied to serve the same functional purpose. And even here, the color and style of the sheath indicated tribal affiliation, warrior status, and social rank.
Different materials. Same instinct: underwear communicates something about who you are.
Rome: The Underwear of Empire
The Roman subligaculum was perhaps the first standardized undergarment in history. A triangle of fabric, a flap, a specific method for tying it at the waist — the same construction worn from the capital in Italy to the Roman outpost in Britain.
That standardization was itself a symbol of power. To encounter a Roman soldier or gladiator wearing the same undergarment as every other soldier or gladiator across the empire was to understand, in a very tangible way, how far Rome's reach extended.
The garment was associated with men of action — soldiers, gladiators, working men. Stage actors were actually required by law to wear one during performances (high kicks were apparently a hazard). Nobility, on the other hand, wore the draped toga with nothing underneath, which was its own kind of statement: I am so far above the work that I don't need to be dressed for it.
Japan: The Samurai Standard
The Japanese fundoshi operated on a framework of honor that went all the way down to the undergarment. A samurai was expected to wear a clean, high-quality fundoshi at all times — because if he died on the battlefield, his body would be examined. To die in dishonorable underwear was to bring shame to his lord.
Beyond honor, the fundoshi was functional. At roughly six feet of wrapped fabric, it provided abdominal compression — valuable when you're carrying a heavy katana and full armor across long distances. The knotwork had to be correct. The quality had to be maintained. Everything had to be in order from the inside out.
Six hundred years later, the Naked Man Festival in Japan still celebrates the fundoshi. Some traditions hold.
King Henry VIII: We Need to Talk About the Codpiece
Nobody in history has made a louder statement about their underwear than King Henry VIII. The codpiece — originally a functional flap — became, in Henry's hands, a full-scale architectural project.
Padded with thick layers of fabric to maximize visual impact. Featured prominently in his armor. Used, apparently, for storage — coins, handkerchiefs, possibly bandages with ointments for various ailments that we will not detail here.
As Chris notes with commendable restraint: "I think he's compensating for something."
The codpiece eventually fell out of fashion, but its existence in the historical record remains a monument to one man's commitment to making an impression.
The Union Suit and the Road to Modern Underwear
By the late 1800s, the union suit arrived — a full-body garment running neck to ankle, marketed as both economical and health-forward. Dr. Gustav Jaeger, a German physician, actually argued that cotton and linen were dangerous because they trapped "noxious poisons" exhaled by the skin. His prescription: heavy animal wool, which would ventilate the body's toxins.
The fact that heavy wool in summer is its own kind of misery appears not to have come up in his research.
1935: The Y-Front Changes Everything
The modern brief has a specific origin story, and it's a good one.
Arthur Kneibler, vice president of Coopers Incorporated, received a postcard from the French Riviera showing a man in a latex swimsuit. That postcard became the design inspiration for the first Y-front brief.
On January 19th, 1935 — in the middle of a Chicago blizzard — a department store placed a mannequin in its window wearing only the new briefs. The reaction was immediate. They sold all 600 pairs the store had received. Over the following week, they moved 30,000 more.
Part of the appeal was the presentation. Unlike the loincloths and union suits that came before, these were sold in individual cellophane bags, implying a clean, modern, almost scientific product. The optics were deliberate: this wasn't your grandfather's garment. This was progress.
The Through-Line
From the Aztec loincloth to the Egyptian Shenti to the Roman subligaculum to the Japanese fundoshi to the padded codpiece to the 1935 Y-front — men across every era and culture have used underwear to communicate status, demonstrate readiness, and signal something about who they are.
The fabrics change. The construction evolves. But the instinct — to take this garment seriously — never does.
What's Next
Part 2 picks up the modern story: how the underwear industry evolved from the Y-front through the development of the pouch system and what it means for men today.
