#BECAUSE THE PRIMARY FUNCTION OF A HISTORICAL CORSET IS BUST SUPPORT

[theawkwardone6]

Literally don’t talk to me about how uncomfortable Victorian women’s fashion was unless you’ve had a Victorian outfit tailor made for your exact measurements, you’ve broken in your corset, and you wear it for a whole day or I will stab you 13 times

[marzipanandminutiae]

I would assume corsets are superior to stays or girdles because they have boob cups, and therefore give actual support.

Girdles, I agree with you on. Stays, not so much.

First thing is, not all corsets have boob cups, and not all stays don't. Often called gussets or gores in this context, these "cups" go in and out of prevalence as the trendy silhouette changes. For example, my replica 1860s corset has them, but my replica 1880s/Generic Late Victorian corset doesn't. Same for Regency versus, say, 1780s stays- the former often have gussets and the latter generally don't, but they're all stays.

But you don't need cups for support, I've found! As long as whatever foundation garment you're wearing is made with breasts in mind and comes up at least to mid-bust level, it's usually pretty supportive. The shape it pushes your boobs into will be different- more or less separated, higher or lower, etc. -but in my experience, flat-fronted corsets and stays can be just as supportive as ones with "cups."

Girdles, on the other hand, don't interact with Yon Boobs at all (as far as I've seen). They've historically coexisted with bras, and therefore aren't meant for support. To the best of my knowledge, they're purely shapewear- with perhaps a bit of functionality for holding up one's stockings, in eras where that was required.

My mother was a teen and very young adult at the end of the "widespread girdle-wearing" era, and she doesn't have much good to say about them. But whenever I ask her, she goes off on a tangent about how Spanx are the devil, so I don't have as much Primary Source Data there as I'd like.

[deus-ex-knoxina]

When you added onto your tags and acknowledged that tightlacing is vastly different than corsetry... I'm ace and I think I'm on the aro spectrum but that was extremely hot of you and I think I fell in love

hey i’m on the aro ace spectrum too high five!! and FUCK yes i’m so glad that my strong feelings on making sure everyone knows the difference are appreciated!!!!!!!!!!!! and also you’re giving me this stellar opportunity to talk about it even MORE anon i love you let the infodumping commence

this gets long so the rest is under the cut:

TL;DR: corsets serve the same purpose as a bra, supporting from the hips instead of the shoulders. today, some people wear them for that purpose, and some people wear them as medical devices for scoliosis. if a corset doesn’t fit properly, it’ll be uncomfortable, which is why we hear actors complain about them so much (because they’re not wearing custom-made ones, like they would have, say, a hundred and fifty years ago).

so when everyone was wearing corsets, they had ones that fit them, and corsets HAD to allow women to breathe and move because EVERYONE was wearing them, including working-class women. tightlacing was done by a tiny minority of upper-class women to get the tiniest waist possible, which was fashionable at the time (and still is, if you look at modern waist trainers). and yes, it was damaging to them, but it’s not the intended purpose of a corset. the reason that so many people today think it IS is because of victorian men, who sucked.

(so don’t draw neil josten like a super-rich super-fashionable victorian woman)

(and that was the tl;dr so as you can imagine! what’s under the cut is quite long! BUT IT’S INTERESTING SO I HIGHLY ENCOURAGE U TO READ)

OKAY SO HERE’S THE DEAL. we always hear about corsets as like, women-oppressing torture devices. that’s not true. the *reason* we have all these misconceptions about corsets is the fault of victorian men, just like so many things are the fault of victorian men

the actual purpose of corsets??? like the ACTUAL actual purpose of corsets??? they have literally the same function as a bra. the benefit of a corset is that it supports from the hips and waist, not from the shoulders, so depending on your bust size a corset might be better for you (and for your back)!

and people do still wear corsets today, *not* just people dressing up. like i mentioned above, they’re practical, they’re COMFORTABLE ACTUALLY, and if you have scoliosis then special corsets are sometimes used as medical devices!

so back to them being comfortable. this is another huge-ass misconception. you know who wore corsets Back In The Day? women. not just rich women. middle-class women, working class women, EVERYONE. because it’s underwear. do you think a woman who lives on a farm and has to help with farm things could do that with a super uncomfortable, super tight corset? no.

you can try to lace your corset up as tight as possible, but if you have ANY form of core/abdominal muscles whatsoever, you’re just. not gonna be able to have a wasp waist. you’re just not! you have muscles there that can’t be pushed out of the way!

and are you REALLY gonna put all that effort in to lace it super fucking tight every single day? no. you’re not. because unless you’re super rich, you’re probably having a family member or spouse or maybe a single maid help you get dressed in the morning, and the two of you just don’t have time to turn ‘putting on undergarments’ into a whole fuckin’ production every single day.

but birl, you ask, why is it that movie actresses (such as emma stone and emma watson, literally just off the top of my head) always complain about corsets? simple answer: they’re not fitted well, and the actresses have been inundated with victorian men’s opinions on tightlacing and think that wearing a corset automatically means they’re gonna have their internal organs fucked up. if a corset doesn’t fit you, of course it’s gonna be uncomfortable!!!

and when it comes to movies/tv, whether it actually fits is... not always treated as a primary concern. because they’re doing it for costumes, and since it’s film, the actresses can change out of the corset and wear something else when they’re not filming. if you’re wearing a corset as part of your everyday clothes, you’re GONNA pay for one that’s made specifically for you (not to mention that off-the-rack clothing is a fairly recent invention, and for the vast majority of human history, clothing was made to fit an individual, so OF COURSE women would wear corsets that fit them)

costume corsets are frequently not a functional garment and they don’t need to behave like one. real corsets are, and they have persisted as a functional garment for CENTURIES, which they would *not* have if they were actively harming every single person who wore them. which, if you recall, was... pretty much every single woman. that’s the difference, and also, like i said, there’s an element of fear that also drives those actresses complaining because they have fallen for the victorian male complaining.

(side note: i watched enola holmes recently, and it’s a great movie, but for FUCK’S sake a corset is not a tool of repression any more than a bra is! i know some of y’all like to say that a bra is a tool of repression, because you hardly have any need for one! but a lot of people actually do need breast support SO THEY DON’T DEVELOP BACK PROBLEMS)

now. on to tightlacing, finally. with a normal corset, you lace it tight enough to get support from it, and no tighter, because why the fuck would you want to imprison your lungs and also you probably have core muscles because only a TINY subset of society was rich enough to afford zero abdominal strength.

tightlacing, on the other hand, is what most people think of when they think of a corset. pulling the laces on the back of the corset as TIGHT AS POSSIBLE (sometimes with multiple people pulling) to get a teeny-tiny waist. it severely restricts your lung capacity (since your lungs go all the way down your back), it forces your internal organs to move, and it can deform your ribcage.

additionally, since you can’t breathe very well, you have to breathe into the top of your chest (this is where the whole ‘heaving bosom’ thing comes from), so you can’t really engage in physical activity AND when you take your corset off, you’re likely to faint because of blood rushing everywhere.

and like i have mentioned SEVERAL times, if you have abdominal muscles, it is NOT GONNA WORK. because you can’t push muscle out of the way.

so this can only be done by the superrich, and IT WAS A FAD. i cannot state this enough. it didn’t last, because it fucked people up! and the fact that it wasn’t healthy, combined with some good old victorian misogyny, meant that victorian men were talking about tightlacing CONSTANTLY. and since normal corsets had been around for forever, nobody was talking about them because everyone knew how corsets were supposed to work!

which means, of course, that if you look at, say, victorian sources discussing corsets, they’re gonna be talking about tightlacing, and if you don’t live in a time where the VAST majority of women are wearing corsets, then you might not know that tightlacing is this weird fad among super-wealthy women and assume that it’s what everyone was doing!

now here’s the thing. we have bras now. we also have modern corsets. guess what? we also have modern tightlacing. those are waist trainers. now, i don’t know as much about them as i do about corsets, but i imagine they at least pretend to be better for you than tightlacing. don’t fall for it. being able to breathe is sexy.

AND if you’re interested in this, bernadette banner and karolina zebrowska have some great youtube videos on it! i actually don’t remember off the top of my head if bernadette banner has a video dedicated to corsets but she does talk about them when analyzing terrible ‘historical’ movie costumes

another side note: so what sparked this initially was talking about the aftg fandom and how neil josten is frequently represented in art as having a tiny waist. having made it to the bottom of this post, i hope u now have an ARSENAL of facts with which to know with 100% certainty that it is impossible for neil josten to have a wasp waist. the guy’s a d1 athlete.

and even if it’s some kind of AU, if he runs as much as he does in canon, no wasp waist. he has abdominal muscles. and body fat, because he is not a bodybuilder and he NEEDS body fat. i get that he’s short???? but he’s not a twink. he’s a future pro athlete. so even if he tightlaced a corset, he would STILL not have a tiny waist. it’s physically impossible for him.

the end!

[theradioghost]

...ok what's up with corsets?

I mean, mostly just a lot of misconceptions about how they worked and what they were for. I’m going to ramble a lot here, but please know that I am not by any definition an expert on any of this, just a 19th century lit major who’s studied a lot of historical context stuff for research and fun purposes.

One clarification is, to simplify the complex and annoying evolution of language over centuries, if it’s from the  early 1800s or later, it’s a corset. If it’s from the 16th-18th centuries, it’s “stays” or a “pair of bodies.” (I think bodies was an earlier term more commonly used for outer garments while stays were undergarments, but don’t quote me on that.) Stays were basically conical with quite a long torso, and you couldn’t lace them particularly tight because metal eyelets weren’t invented until the 1830s and the fabric couldn’t take that strain. Depending on the fashion at the time, their basic function was to create a perfectly smooth, very long silhouette, push your boobs up, or both. Typically their structure came from cording, reeds, whalebone, or layers of paste-stiffened fabric; steel stays from this period are essentially orthopedic devices (or, and I’m obsessed with this idea: fakes created by 19th century fetishists. There’s a reason the 19th century is my favorite historical period and it’s because everything was absolutely nuts, all the time). They also fell in and out of fashion at times – if you look at the naturalistic, Grecian styles of European dresses in the 1820s, for example, many women were wearing either very light stays just to push their bust up, or none at all.

Some nice examples of stays from this period are this, this, and this, from the V&A’s collections. Looking at most portraiture of women from the 16-1700s also pretty clearly displays the conical silhouette that stays produced, but I’m going to refrain from adding images to this post because I already suspect that it’s going to be incredibly, frustratingly long.

Women basically weren’t wearing structured undergarments before the Renaissance, so medieval stays are not a thing.. Although on a fascinating side note, a few years back someone found a bunch of medieval bras, which we had no idea were a thing until then, so that’s really cool. 

Regardless of whether you’re talking stays or corsets, two important things. First of all, they were not worn directly against the skin what the hell, firstly because that is incredibly uncomfortable, and secondly because in periods where most people owned fairly little clothing and a lot of that was wool, having a linen or cotton undergarment under all your clothes helped keep them cleaner by separating them from your skin. Historically most often that was a shift, basically just a big long undershirt thing.

The second important thing is whalebone, historically always the number one material for corset boning. Whalebone is an incredibly misleading name, and I hate it, because it took me forever to learn that “whalebone” is not bone but baleen, the bristly stuff that filter-feeding whales have instead of teeth. It’s made from keratin, same as our hair and fingernails. It’s light, flexible, and becomes bendable with warmth, meaning that over time, the boning of a corset would conform to your natural body shape as it was warmed by your body heat, and would stay in that shape. All-steel boning only really became A Thing in the last couple of decades that corsets were an everyday garment for most women, and that wasn’t because of superior structural properties. It was because it was cheaper, given that after centuries of whaling, there were a lot fewer whales to hunt, and acquiring baleen became more expensive and difficult. Even then, a lot of manufacturers just moved to things like featherboning (made from the shafts of feathers), coraline (made from a plant whose name I cannot remember), cane, or just cording (often cotton or paper cords), rather than steel. They also tended to use spiral steels, which can flex more, as opposed to solid steel bones. The main use of steel in corsets was actually to reinforce the closures, the front busk and the back where it laced.

(Most modern corsets are either all-steel waist training corsets or “fashion corsets” boned with flimsy plastic, but there’s actually a modern product called synthetic whalebone which is a plastic designed to replicate the properties of baleen as closely as possible.)

Then we get to the Victorian period, and that’s where pop culture really kind of loses its shit over the idea of corsetry? All the fainting and shifting organs and women getting ribs surgically removed (what) and generally the impression that Corsets Are Horrible Death Garments.

Tightlacing is one of the big things here. Yes, there were Victorian women who tightlaced to reduce their waists to dramatic extremes, and it was not healthy. There are also women today who put themselves through dangerous, unbelievable things to achieve the most fashionable body possible (tw in that link for disordered eating, self-harm, and abuse), and that article only covers the extremes of the professional modeling industry, not everyday things like high heels, for example. Most women who were tightlacing were young, wealthy, and fashionable, not worrying about being healthy enough to work as long as they could achieve ideal beauty – the same people who do this kind of thing now. And part of the reason we know so much about it is that it was extreme and uncommon even then. Medical experts ranted about the dangers of tightlacing, people campaigned against it. It was definitely not the case that all women were going around suffocating in tightlaced corsets all the time.

It’s worth considering our sample of evidence. You see a lot of illustrated fashion plates, which don’t look like real women now, and didn’t then either. By the late 1800s, photographers had already figured out plenty of tricks with angles and posing to make a model look as wasp-waisted as possible. They would also just straight up paint women’s waists smaller in a lot of pictures. And when you consider surviving garments, a disproportionate number of them are from rich young women who hadn’t yet married and had children, because for a variety of reasons those tend to be the clothes that are preserved and survive. The constantly-swooning women of Victorian literature are for some reason presumed to be representative of real life and the constriction of corsets – let me tell you, as someone who studied 19th century literature specifically, everything is exaggerated and melodramatic, especially extremes of emotion (and men also swoon a lot too). It also seems weird that we nod along unquestioning with the most extreme claims of 19th century panics about the medical harm of corsets (rib removal? with 19th century surgery???) and then just mock those silly, stupid Victorians when we read about things like bicycle face or the claim that fast vehicles would make women’s uteruses fly out of their bodies or whatever.

In fact, corsets were a pretty sensible garment in a lot of ways. They seem really restrictive to us now, but historical garments in general didn’t stretch the way modern knit fabrics do. In addition to supporting the bust just like any modern bra, corsets could actually make moving and breathing easier by helping to support the weight of ridiculously heavy dresses. Women did in fact live everyday, active lives wearing them, including lower-class women who worked physically demanding jobs. Late-Victorian women actually started doing a lot more sports, including cycling – that cyclist at the top of the bicycle face article is definitely wearing a corset, for example. They were used to them, too, and used to the specific ways you move in those kind of clothes, which most modern folks who try to wear that stuff one time are not. One interesting thing I’ve heard is that while corsets helped posture a lot – a lot of people today use them medically to help with back pain and support for just that reason – over time that understandably means that if you’re always wearing a corset, your abdominal muscles won’t be very strong because they’re not doing as much work keeping your posture straight. No ab crunches for Victorian women I guess.

Looking at extant Victorian-era clothing, the fashionable wasp-waisted silhouette actually had a lot more to do with the optical illusion achieved with extensive padding, which widened the hips and turned the upper body into a smooth, Chris-Evans-esque triangle. In comparison, the waist looks smaller. (Seriously, look up some photos of late 19th century ladies, their whole front upper body is this perfectly smooth convex curve. That’s all padding.) Silhouette was what the Victorians really cared about, and padding is a lot more sensible and comfortable than tightlacing.

My basic point here is just I guess that there’s a common and weirdly moralizing perception now that the historical corset was, invariably, this horrible constricting heavy steel cage thing that damaged your health and was a Tool Of Patriarchal Oppression. There’s also a lot of really bad costuming in historical dramas. I just think the reality is a lot more interesting. Also that modern steel waist training corsets kind of terrify me?

If you want more info and some good primary and academic sources from people who actually study and recreate historical garments and Actually Know Things, I recommend Bernadette Banner’s videos (here and here) on corsets – also just her stuff in general, I’ve been incredibly happy to see her gaining a lot of attention lately because she’s delightful – this video by historical costumer Morgan Donner wearing a corset daily for a week and talking about what it feels like, and this article, which cites among other things a really interesting late-19th-century study by a doctor trying to actually gather data on corsetry and its effects. Also for that matter, the aforementioned YouTube costumers have respectively made 17th-century stays and a late 19th-century corset, and seeing how these garments are put together is really interesting.

(I feel like I heard somewhere once that S-shape corsets from 1900-1910ish might have been more potentialy harmful because they did weird things to your back posture, but honestly my historical knowledge and interest drops precipitiously when you hit the 20th century.)

[juniperpublishers-fashion-b-blog]

On the Trail of a Nineteenth Century Corset - Juniper Publishers

Abstract

Through over four centuries women of Western world wore corsets to present their social status, sexuality and beauty. Furthermore, women wore different types of corsets, to mirror the mood of each era, from strict cone-shaped model that represented power and strenght, to the ‘‘hourglass model’’ were modesty, fragility and passivity represented the ideal female figure. Women nowadays continue wearing corsets. One model which is featured in the media is the hourglass corset shape that became the iconic corset shape. The present case study was designed to show corset making of a bespoke corset with the S shape chacarterised by a slim waist and broader bust, and hips. The basic block pattern was drafted on the German Muller pattern making system. Busk, spiral steel bones were used to shape the figure, and special attention was given to embellishment placed on the seams.

Keywords: Body measurements; Flat corset pattern; Muller & Sohn Systems; Bespoke corset making; Sewing

Introduction

From the late Renaissance into the twentieth century, women in the western society perceived the corset as an essential part of fashion, and so as a component of human culture. By wearing a corset women could express their social status, self-discipline, beaty, respectability and erotic allure. But still some women considered the corset as an assault on the body. Historians argue about the origin of the corset. Although the Greece and Minoan Crete were wearing tight bodices exposing their breasts, ancient fashion does not have significant cultural continuity to the European corset developed in Renaissance Spain and Italy. Modern fashion of the first half of the sixteenth century was characterized as tailored clothing, designed to shape the body accomplished throught the gradual development of seems, buttons, lacing and the use of rigid materials such as fishbone, whalebone, horn and buckram. An important component of the corset was the busk, a piece of wood or metal, placed in the middle of the breasts in order to keep the wearer straighter [1,2]. Since the Middle Ages, the production of stays (term introduced by the seventeenth century, garment to support the naturally weak female body) were dominated by men who were organized into guilds. Women were only empleyed as seamstresses, and could not be part of the guild. Corsets were hand-made till the nineteenth century. So, based on the complex making of stays, tailors had to develop considerable technical skills. Bespoke tailors who specialized in making stays were known as ‘‘corsetieres’’. Industrialization enabled many inventions such as metal eyelets, the first steel front busk fastening, and various types of lacing and unlacing. Corsets could be constructed differently, and a variety types appeared [3,4]. According to Erkal [5], corsetry is claimed as one of the popular garments of a social condition and the prevailing sign of a specific fashion“. The present case study was designed to show corset making of a ‘‘hourglass’’ corsets fashionable in the Victorian era from drafting a flat corset pattern over sewing process to the final product using modern material.

Case Report

Pattern making

The german pattern making system M. Muller & Sohn was used to develop pattern for corset around the year 1880. Corset pattern was developed from basic dress block that did not include wearing ease, allowances for movement and comfort, because the garment should shape the body. The basic dress block was drafted using body mesurements of the end user, as well as calculated measurements. Body height was measured as the height from top of the head to the floor, bust measurement was measured as the circumference over the fullest part of the bust, waist measurement was measured as the circumference at the narrowest part of the waist, and hip measurements was measured as the circumference over the fullest part of the seat and the hip. Primary body measurements were used as foundation to calculate auxiliary measurements with the help of a measurement chart, such as: scye depth, back waist length, hip depth, finished length, neck width, bust length, front waist length, back width, scye width and chest width. In order to determine precise body measurements, the person being mesured was dressed in underwear, so that the measuring tape lied flat around the body. Due to the close-fitting garment no ease was added to the calculated measurements. The basic dress block contained two waist darts at the front and two darts at the back pattern. According to the design of the desired corset shape the basic block had to be adapted first by moving the bust dart for 2cm to the right, followed by dart adaptations illustrated in Figure 1a and 1b. All measurements shown in Figure 1a, b are in centimetres [6 - 8].

Before cutting, seam allowances had been added to all pattern pieces in the desired width. The pattern also contained notches in the bust and waist line, and the grainline (Figure 1c).

Material and tools for corset making

The corset was made of two layers with a interlining. The main fabric was silk and the lining was strong cotton material. After cutting main fabric, lining and interlining, the interlining material was bonded to the main fabric. Bias tape made from the same fabric as the lining were used as bone casing tape. Lace, and ribbon were used to decorate the bespoke corset. Scissors, thimble, hand-sewing needle, measuring tape, awl, hole punches, bolt cutters and needle nose pliers were tools needed in corset making.

Results & Discussion

A bespoke corset was produced based on personal body measurements. Functionality and fit of drafted and adjusted corset pattern was tested and evaluated by the end user and had a proper fit (Figure 2). Pattern pieces were joined using sewing machines. Stitch diagram, machine type, stitch type, thread and needle size are given in Table 1 and Figure 3. Special presser feet, edge guide for maintaining a fixed distance, and edge binding guide were used to obtain a regular seam line. After holles were drilled, attaching machine was used to press the two eyelet sections together through the material, spreading out the tubular section over the edge so that the end held fixed together.

The centre busk was placed in the middle of the breasts, and each seam was boned with 7mm spiral metal or plastic boning. Metal eyelets were placed at the centre back where the corset was laced with a lacing cord. Lace and ribbons are sewn over the seams on the front, side and back seams, as well as on the top and bottom edge of the corset. Centre front and centre back were the only straight lines on the corset pattern, all other seams were curves. Spiral metal and plastic boning were placed to the curved seems to shape the body. Bone casing has been sewn over the seam allowance to encase raw edges, holding the inserted bones. Special attention was given to decorative stitching and embellishment which was placed on the seams so they ephasize the form. Decorative stitching was also used to strength the seams [9-11].

Conclusion

Corset development requires considerable technical skills with a knowledge of anatomy that enables production of wellfitting corsets. The first corsets were made by men because of the complex and sophisticated production. Nowadays, corsets are made by men and women knows known by the French equivalent terms corsetier (male) and corsetière (female) [12]. Historical styles of corsets can be reproduced only by corsetmaker who are familiar with historical fashion over centuries of history. In order to develop a corset of proper fit the basic pattern should be drafted using personal body mesurements and adjusted to the body shape. Knowledge of anthropometry, material, fusing equipment and methods, sewing techniques, corset making tools, busk, plastic and metal boning and the various methods for the incorporation of the boning are essential in corset making.

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