Man's best friend? A codpiece with personality (author's illus.).

Also called a braguette (which, by the way, is not a loaf of French bread), the codpiece looked kind of like a sock (remember Flea in the Red Hot Chili Peppers?), which attached to the crotch area of a man's hose or breeches with buttons or ties. Some codpieces were more conspicuous than others. The utilitarian codpiece was a simple, unadorned sock that was the forerunner to today's button-fly crotch feature. For those with bolder, or perhaps more insecure, egos, the sock was more form-fitting and often padded. Foppish aristocrats wore codpieces that were gilded, brocaded, and even decorated with jewels. Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s—cocky from their exploits in the Americas—created codpieces of priapic proportions. And Queen Anne Boleyn reportedly once remarked to the visiting Italian Duke Fabrizio of Bologna (well-known for being well-endowed), "Be that thine codling, or art thou glad to see me?"

There are a few theories about the origin of the codpiece. One theory is that it offered a comfortable solution to the overly-restrictive and cumbersome hose worn by men. By creating an opening at the crotch and covering it with a flap, the codpiece maintained healthy bloodflow to the vitals. Another interesting theory relates to Middle Age fashion. In the fourteenth-century, Europeans were just as obsessed with height as Americans are with thinness today. However, poor diet and the plague kept many men from soaring to the statuesque ideal, so many did whatever they could to create at least an illusion of height. One of sartorial tricks they played was lowering the waistline of the doublet skirt to the hips (giving the illusion of an elongated trunk), while simultaneously raising the hemline so that it revealed more of the leg. Voilà!  Instant height.

But the re-engineering of the doublet created an interesting by-product. You see, men didn't wear boxers in those days. They went, uh, commando. And according to some historians, the leggings, or hose, they wore under their skirts were not unlike the crotchless ones you might see at Frederick's of Hollywood—though covering the legs, these leggings left the family jewels swinging in the wind. So raising the skirt hemline naturally created quite a show when a man sat down or mounted his horse.

Not that this was a problem, of course. Modesty had different rules then, especially for the upper classes. Consequently, men went romping all over Europe in their skimpy skirts with their bits and pieces for all to see. But back then, even fashion had a caste system and so when peasants began to flaunt their phalluses (phallae?), too, the aristocrats concluded that something had to be done. Their solution? A sumptuary law requiring peasants to cover up. Apparently, baring one's herring was a privilege, not a right, bestowed only on the landed gentry. Author Julian Robinson explains:

[I]n 1348, when a number of British merchants adopted this style of dress, a law was passed that restricted the right to wear this fashion to the aristocracy; lesser mortals, regardless of their wealth and natural physical endowments, had to be content with padding their front crotch area so as to simulate a continual erection, which at that time was perceived as a splendidly alluring male characteristic. The law, however, was impossible to enforce and the contemporary English commentator Chaucer remarked in The Parson's Tale that many male garments 'were horribly scanty—too short to cover their shameful members.' (Robinson, 52).

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