We have a fantastic costume collection at Chelsea Reference Library and Gillian Nunns, one of our Triborough Reference Librarians has been taking a look….
In ‘What lies beneath part 1′ I had a look at the bizarre story of the crinoline in the context of the changing tides of fashion. Which brings us to the corset, which also has something of a bizarre, if not more sinister history than the crinoline.
The corset had gone out of fashion in the Regency period of the early 19th Century, when a natural figure and light muslin dresses were in fashion. Although they still existed in various guises, it was in the 1870s when bustles meant that clothes were moulded to the body at the front of the skirt and around the hips that the corset came back into its own. The corset industry received a lot of impetus, leading to a great variety of types of corset, and different inventions around their design were advocated. Also, ladies’ magazines of the time began giving more descriptions of corsets and advertised them frequently, such as this one from the Giraud Company in the 1880s.
And here is an image that I found in Support and Seduction by Beatrice Fontanel, advertising the “Thylda” corset.
The corset also became hugely controversial as it brought with it a trend for smaller and smaller waists, and the controversial practice of “tight-lacing” – a practice which involved systematically reducing a woman’s waist by means of lacing the corset as tightly as possible over a period of time. The controversy is very well documented as readers of the time could now write to publications with their views, which make interesting (if not painful) reading as I discovered from looking through our Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine issues. In 1867 one lady described the practice of “tight-lacing” at her school and described girls competing to have waists of 13 inches (which I hope was an exaggeration!)
“Every morning one of the maids used to come to assist us to dress, and a governess superintended, to see that our corsets were drawn as tight as possible. After the first few minutes every morning I felt no pain, and the only ill effects apparently were occasional headaches and loss of appetite. Though I have always heard tight-lacing condemned, I have never suffered any ill effects myself, and, as a rule, our school was singularly free from illness”
(From Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, 1868)
But many thought otherwise, and The Lancet was one publication that regularly voiced concerns, here is one comment quoted in the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, 1968:
“The mischief produced by such a practice can hardly be overestimated. It tends gradually to misplace organs of the body, while, by compressing them, it must from the first interfere with their functions. The grounds upon which Tight-lacing has been recommended are diametrically opposed to the teachings of anatomy and physiology, not to say common sense”
Despite many speaking out against the practice of tight-lacing corsets, the practice continued, although alternatives were invented, such as this orthopaedic corset that we found an illustration of in a book called The Corset; A Cultural History by Valerie Steele.
Fashion only turned away from the corset apparently of its own accord in the early 20th Century, and almost overnight the hobble skirt and a more natural figure was all the rage, as depicted in this postcard of around 1911.
And here an advert for what might have been underneath, which I found in The Story of Women’s Underwear by Muriel Barbier and Shazia Boucher.
And when the First World War broke out practical concerns played a crucial role in women’s fashion which perhaps hadn’t in earlier times. No longer could women take up any fashion despite their practical drawbacks, and the sometimes bizarre undergarments that they entailed. I was interested in seeing illustrations of typical fashion in different decades of the 20th Century in a book called Changing Trends in Fashion by Anne Tyrrell, including this one from the time of the First World War.
I also had a look at the future of the undergarment in our issues of Vogue from the 1920s and 30s, and noted the peculiar names given to types of undergarments using new materials that allowed for greater freedom of movement.
And how about this now-not-so-sensational shape advertised in Vogue 1978.
And a French advertisement from 1984 that I found in The Story of Women’s Underwear by Muriel Barbier and Shazia Boucher.
Perhaps we could say that the laws of fashion are not as strict as they used to be. Here is a picture of a Lacroix evening dress in 1997 taken by Roxanne Lowit, which we found in The Corset; A Cultural History by Valerie Steele.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these two posts and if you like to find out more do pop into to see the collection at Chelsea Library.
Gillian Nunns
Triborough Reference Librarian, Chelsea Reference Library
Further information
The sources used for this post are all available at Chelsea Reference Library.
- Changing Trends in Fashion by Anne Tyrrell, 1986
- The Corset; A Cultural History by Valerie Steele, 2003
- Support and Seduction by Beatrice Fontanel, 1998
- The Story of Women’s Underwear by Muriel Barbier and Shazia Boucher, 2010
- Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, 1868
- Vogue, September 1923
- Vogue, March 1936
- Vogue, February 1978
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