So I'm currently reading How to Be A Victorian by Ruth Goodman and it's been hugely enlightening. On the matter of cleanliness the upper classes were extremely fastidious. Like I don't know about you guys but I assumed because we bathe and wash our hair way more than people ever used to that Victorians weren't so intense about it but apparently changing your underthings (all of them) multiple times a day was the ideal. Any less than once a day was nasty.

The middle - upper classes also had this whole snobbery thing about smelling like soap apparently. They apparently back and forthed over whether warm or cold water was healthy or disastrous and then soap came along and health experts were like YES, WASH WITH COLD WATER AND SOAP FOR ULTIMATE HEALTHINESS but soap was expensive and it was was pungent and it became this whole social status thing that if you smelled like soap you were clearly rich because you could afford to buy a bar of soap and use it every morning. It was pungent enough to mask most body odors apparently. By our part of the century though they'd figured out scented soaps and were sticking lavender and other floral scents in it but it still had undertones of soap and it was like YES I AM CLEAN AND WEALTHY SMELL MY fANCY SOAP, GOOD SIR.

The book also mentions the removable easily washed dress protectors which you stuck in your pits to save your dress and apparently those are a thing you can still buy from haberdasheries. Also scented dusting powders for your sweaty parts which is not so revolutionary to me because I sell powdered deodorant on the daily. LYCOPODIUM POWDER IS INSANE.