By Essiba Small

As girls, our mothers ensured that we didn’t leave home without it. No, not your house keys nor the vex money — your slip.

An undergarment that has been around since the 1500s (its first incarnation being the petticoat), the slip has served to panty lines and preventing boys from getting a peep show into our sheer dresses.

It also served to help skirts hang smoothly and prevented chafing of the skin from coarse fabrics.

In classic black and white movies of old, when the starlet undressed for a night of romance, she always wore a slip underneath.

Elizabeth Taylor is often remembered for the lace slips she wore in the two films Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Butterfield 8 that covered her and kept her sex symbol status in tact.

For today’s woman, however, the slip is far from a desired undergarment.

“Is only old women who wear them things,” 27-year-old Shawna said. “And I was never the skirt-wearing type anyway.”

Twenty-six-year-old Vashti agreed.

“Those things gone out now since thongs come in. I mean that is so ’80s.”

Erica, 33, had other reasons for abandoning the slip.

“I wore them as a girl and always found them to make me feel hot and sticky.

Both Erica and Shawna found that wearing tights was better than wearing slips.

“I feel more comfortable in them,” Erica said, adding that when she buys sheer skirts, she looks for those with lining. Whenever she has her clothes made, she stays away from sheer fabric.

Vashti, on the other hand strongly made a case for thongs and even going commando (without underwear) when wearing sheer skirts and dresses.

“I do it all the time,” she said with a naughty grin.

At least for Louise and Janice who are in the 40s and 50s age bracket, the slip is still king.

“I don’t wear them every day, but I wear them with certain clothes,” Louise said. “Right now I have to buy another one.”

Janice admits that she inherited her collection of slips from her mother.

“In those days, I think they used to pay $6.95 for one,” she said with a laugh.

Slips may not be popular anymore, but they can still be found in some Charlotte Street stores for around $25.

Lingerie retailer Wonderful World recently sold out a collection of slips, but it’s nothing like the ones your mother told you to wear.

“Actually the young people who come to buy them use them as skirts, because of their slinky kind of look.”

The slips have since been sold out, the Wonderful World salesclerk said.

Asked for the “long-time” slip, the young female clerk laughed.

“People don’t wear them things again. Those things gone out. I never even wore one of those.”

However, The Wall Street Journals style writer Christina Binkley, in her column for the magazine, blamed the disappearance of the slip on a diminished sense of modesty.

“Our social mores no longer conform to a world where nice girls wear skirts that don’t cling.”