Garters

Garters are items of clothing worn around the thighs. They are normally just a few inches in width. They often contain small bells and/or ribbons. In the 19th and 20th centuries, they were used to hold up stockings, but the advent of elastic has made them unnecessary.

The most famous "garter" in English is the Order of the Garter, which traces its history to the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In the poem, Gawain accepts a garter from the wife of his host (while resisting her carnal temptations) to save his life and then wears it as a mark of shame for his moral failure and cowardice. King Arthur and his men proclaim it no shame and begin, themselves, to wear the garter to indicate their shared fate. At that point, however, the garter was a larger garment that was used as a foundation.

In Elizabethan fashions, men wore garters with their hose, and colorful garters were an object of display. In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, "cross braced" garters are an object of some derision. In male fashion, a type of garter for holding up socks has continued as a part of male dress up to the present (although its use is considered somewhat stodgy at present).

As with many items of female undergarments, they are sometimes items of fetish. For this reason they are sometimes worn by exotic dancers.

A garter is often worn by newlywed brides. It is the groom's privilege to remove the garter and toss it to the male guests. The symbolism to deflowering is unambiguous.

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From Necessity to Ceremony

Before elastic, stockings stayed up by being tied or strapped up, and the garter was that fastening — worn below or above the knee, plain for work and decorated for display. Elizabethan men wore garters with their hose as visible fashion, colourful and deliberate; Shakespeare's Malvolio in Twelfth Night, imagining himself great in cross-gartered stockings — garters crossed up the leg — is mocked precisely because the style was conspicuous and already dated. Men's dress kept a descendant longest in the sock garter, a strap holding up calf socks, part of male dress into the present though now considered somewhat stodgy.

Elastic ended the necessity in the twentieth century: stockings held themselves, then tights replaced stockings for most wearers, and the garter belt became a specialist garment. What survived is ceremony and symbol. The Order of the Garter, England's highest order of chivalry, wears its garter below the knee. The bridal garter, kept and tossed at weddings, is a keepsake version of the working fastening. Small bells and ribbons, once decoration on a useful strap, are now the whole point — the garter's history is a common clothing pattern, in which a fastening outlives its function as an ornament.