Lingerie Choices of Working Turkish Women

Lingerie, which is as old as human history is the most personal object of women all around the world. It’s a powerful way of expressing femininity. Its style and its use changed throughout history but it still stands for women to attract men. Since ages Western world has dominated the fashion of lingerie and still they are the masters of lingerie.

Turkey, with both its geographical and historical position, is the closest Islamic country to the West. It is because of this closeness, there is an ongoing interaction between two different cultural heritages. Especially after the establishment of the Turkey republic this interaction gained a pace and gave its name to many aspects of Turkish life style by manipulating deeply. Fashion can strongly be one of these areas that are affected from this interaction causing an immense change on both women and men’s clothing and however significantly on women disguised under veils. That change affected not only their outfit but also their interpretation of life.

Lingerie concept is one of the results of that interaction which was adopted from Western world. Its settlement in Turkish Women’s life started with the westernization movements of Administrative Reforms and mostly with the Second Constitutional Monarchy. After the Proclamation of the Republic with the help of the reforms in the area of attire, a radical change was experienced not only with the out wear of Turkish women, but also with their underwear and its perception.

With these reforms, the underclothing concept which was same for both men and women of Ottoman society, has left its place to the concept of lingerie which was current only for women. Today, if we are to consider the urban women who have their economical independence so far, we can clearly observe that they’ve almost adapted the look of their European fellows and they are continuously informing themselves about the latest lingerie trends and fashions.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the