I bought my first bodysuit for a wedding in 2019. Found myself in the changing room of a now-defunct boutique and couldn’t, for the life of me, work out whether I was meant to wear knickers with it. Over them. Under them. Nowhere at all, apparently – a sales assistant named Priya informed me “most people just go without” in the same voice she would have used to tell me the fire exit was to my left. Bought it anyway.
Commando under a silk skirt. Ruined the entire reception being convinced everyone could see.
Nobody could, of course. But you couldn’t have told that to me at the time, and I suspect that’s the actual problem with this question overall. Not the mechanics of whether to or how – it’s the not knowing and being utterly confident told by someone else what you should do, so defaulting to making shit up on the spot in fluorescent lighting whilst hoping the random person waiting outside the changing room stall doesn’t come in and expose you as somebody who bought a leather all-in-one for summer.
Six years and, by my extremely dumb counting, eleven bodysuits later, I’ve got an answer. If not a rule. An answer, which as you’ll note is a different thing entirely, and I’ll explain why we’re drawing this semantic distinction in just a second.
Why nobody actually tells you the truth about this.
Alright, so here’s my Hot Take after reading approximately every article on this subject that exists, at the point in my life where I was still looking for someone else’s hard and fast rule to obey instead of just…figuring it out for myself. The answers you’ll find split into two camps, and both of them are technically lying to you.
Camp one: wear nothing at all. Always. Never wear underwear with your bodysuit because the gusset is built-in for sanity reasons and underwear underneath just defeats the point of that.
Camp two: wear underwear, for fucks sake and if you don’t at least pick a smooth pair.
Both of these are correct some of the time and completely inaccurate most of it, which is, honestly, the least useful answer any “Advice” column can give you. Nobody will say – because it sounds far too confident to admit – is that it totally depends on what the bodysuit is made out of, what you’re wearing over or under it, and how much you personally care about either a visible seam down your stomach OR the alternative situation I’m about to detail.
My sister Robyn sends me a lot of voice notes. We’ve got similar senses of humour so they often feature her giving some idiot celebrity news story the salty criticism it deserves. But she sent me one – just one word, fuck me – after I’d asked her about this situation that simply said “I wear a thong under everything all of the time, always, non negotiable, I’m not an animal Fran.” Because camp one’s entire selling point is that it’s more high-brow, “sophisticated” not to wear underwear with your bodysuit. Where Rob smells villain. Robyn thinks the opposite. One of them has to be right…and also they’re both right? Completely dependent on the bodysuit you’re wearing, which is what no one spells out on the internet because they can’t word-veeeerryyy easily say “it depends” in a click-bait headline.
The thing that really made me question the “always/never wear underwear with your bodysuit” people was when I bought a yellow bodysuit from Marks and Spencer, swear to God I’ve learned nothing. Yellow. Thin cotton fine fabric. Supposed to be worn tucked into dungarees -turned it into a full on 70s costume because it was yellow, fuck me- and went without underwear because that’s what the internet told me to do. Wore it around all Saturday. By the time four pm rolled around I understood something about cotton retaining moisture that I will never un-know, and suffice it to say the entire gusset area was a problem I had to solve in the ladies of Boots using hand soap, paper towels and approximately twenty years’ worth of panic over nothing jeans were ever designed to handle without a bit of extra cotton between them and your skin. That bodysuit needed underwear, yes fucking jonathan sandy needed underwear. Not for hygiene reasons I was worried about somehow while gripping the bathtub edge, but because even that thin against your skin for that long in that weather was never going to end well unless there was either a thicker layer of cotton or some damn knickers inbetween.
The actual rule-ish conclusion I eventually came to, which is why this isn’t a rule at all.
So instead of a rule, I have these questions I ask myself every time now when I’m faced with whether or not to wear knickers with a new bodysuit, rather than just blindly following camp Google. Here they are. I’m sorry it’s not as tidy as everyone would probably like.
If the bodysuit is silky smooth, the type of fabric that doesn’t have any visible weave to it at all, being worn under something tailored or structured like a blazer/jacket or tailored trousers where a visible panty line would actually be visible and bother me more than going commando does, I will not wear underwear with it. This covers maybe three of my eleven bodysuits. Skims 1 would fall into this category because the fabric is so thin that any additional underwear would create a visible line automatically and kind of defeats the point of the entire bodysuit, which is to have as smooth of a line as humanly possible without underwear getting in the way.
Pretty much anything with a cotton element to it, as learned previously in pants, goes with underwear no matter what. Or anything I know I’ll be wearing for longer than four hours at a time, or anything I plan on wearing with trousers where I’ll be sat at a desk all day – every single time. Thin pair of seamless knickers. No lace bits that could possibly print-through and humiliate me for years afterwards, but knickers nonetheless. This is the Boots public bathroom lesson I will literally never unlearn, and I hate myself enough to admit I almost did relearn it TWICE in 2022 thank you to another bodysuit before remembering about that fateful afternoon and panicking down the shoe department instead.
If it’s one of the bodysuits with the mesh or lace panels down the sides (yes, several of mine have them. Apparently I have a type.) Then underwear becomes mandatory regardless of how long I’ll be wearing it because that’s just personal heat I’m not willing to give again. Mesh/pantyhose against your skin with nothing between is just a decision you make ONCE. Friend Deborah, who works at a school so basically has three minutes to get ready every morning, learned that lesson with a bodysuit she bought for going out and then…wore under a jumper to work because she was in a rush and didn’t think about how it would feel. Text me at lunch to complain. Can’t repeat verbatim but it involved the phrase “never again” twice.
tl;dr is it less about the bodysuit and more about what you’re wearing it with/under and for how long. Same way you wouldn’t wear a heavy sweater under a blazer. They might be both “sweaters?” But that doesn’t mean they work together in all situations.
All this seamless underwear business everyone fucks up.
If you conclude yes underwear is necessary, mistake number two – and god I was doing this for at least TWO YEARS before Robyn’s little sister Marnie called me out at a barbecue one summer, over-confidently because she worked in lingerie retail at the time and was absolutely exhausted of having that exact conversation with raging millennials – is grabbing whatever’s at the top of the underwear drawer. Standard cotton panties, elastic waistband, seam around the legs will ALWAYS print through anything vaguely see-through the second you sit down. Again, you will NOT notice this when you’re standing up in the changing room mirror with the lighting subtly flattering you. You’ll notice it six months down the line when you’re staring helplessly at a photo of yourself sitting down with your shirt pulled up above your belly button and suddenly noticing something you cannot unsee. Every. Single. Time.
Seamless for life. Literally. The kind that are laser cut rather than sewn together, with absolutely no elastic edge to grip onto your thighs. More expensive than the three-pack kind, which I too pissed at myself about when I first started doing this enough to actually do the maths on getting ones that wouldn’t print through versus how many bodysuits I own vs how many times this has happened to me. Suddenly not spending twenty on a pair of underwear didn’t feel like being smart, it felt like robbing myself of the ONLY way to ensure I don’t have to spend my weekends trawling through Instagram photos from parties convincing myself undies aren’t visible in that one photo. I own four pairs of them now that serve nothing else other than being worn with bodysuits. I never thought I’d be the type to say that about underwear.
Side note. Colour also matters here. Another thing it took me years to realise because – gasp – I thought black underwear under a black bodysuit would be discreet. It’s not. Black underwear creates a FAR more visible line under anything black than you’d expect, particularly in direct sunlight or flash photography. Once you notice it in one photo you will ALWAYS notice it. Nude. Or at least, as close to your skin tone as you can manage. It still feels silly but Marnie explained it to me patiently one day, the way you would someone who should genuinely know this stuff by now.
I wear undies with most of my bodysuits, so.
Look. I know you came here hoping I was gonna have one easy, quick rule for you. Newsflash: There isn’t one. The reason being because, as previously stated, it depends ON THE BODYSUIT YOU’RE BUYING WHETHER OR NOT YOU NEED UNDERPANTS.
But if you’ve made it this far hoping for some shortcut, here’s the short of it:
Skin tight/transparent or fine material, nothing under something I’m wearing that’s more fitted than the bodysuit itself? Fly free, baby. Cotton blend/no matter how high-cut it is I’ll be sitting at a desk all day wearing it? Underwear. Does it have lace/strings of any sort? Double threat – underwear every time.
Seamless, as close to your skin colour as possible, and stop assuming black is a neutral pad color just because it is for tops. You’re welcome.
