Welcome to day 10 of the student blogging challenge! Today the topic was of my free choice so I decided to centre this post around one of my personal interests, corsets and corset construction.
As some of you may know, I’m a huge historical fashion geek. I love learning about different fashion eras through the years and how fashion has evolved. One thing that I find super interesting about historical fashion is corsets. I really enjoy learning about how corsets have shifted through the years and how they went out of style. Today I will be going over corset myths, the history of corsets, and some facts about corsets.
What is a corset?
Some of you may be reading this and have absolutely no idea what a corset is. A corset is a historical undergarment that many women would wear for shape and support. Here is what a Victorian corset would typically look like
Corset myths
When people think about the word corset, usually some pretty bad things come to mind. For example, fainting, unhealthy waist reduction, and inability to breathe. Many of these things come from Hollywood’s portrayal of corsets. For this segment, I will go over some corset myths and the actual facts behind them.
- Corsets make you faint or feel sick
If worn correctly, corsets can be quite comfortable. If you feel sick when wearing a corset, it is most likely because it doesn’t fit, you have tight-laced it too far, or you’re wearing it for too long at a time. You should wear a corset for 8 hours at a time. Movies have shown women fainting frequently and feeling sick while wearing them. If they were really that impractical, they definitely wouldn’t have stayed around for that long. Women in history have been able to play sports in corsets with ease.
2. Women broke their lower ribs to wear corsets
Waist reduction was not a huge factor in wearing corsets for the most part in history. Women would have worn them for support in the way the women wear bras nowadays. Breaking your lower ribs was not very common at all to fit in corsets.
3. Women were forced to wear corset by men and are a sign of the patriarchy
This is actually very inaccurate. In fact, there were even corsets for men.
History of corsets
The first corset became popular in sixteenth-century Europe and reached the height of its popularity in the Victorian era. Throughout history, corsets made many differences in the shape and construction methods. In world war 1, women were asked to stop buying and producing corsets to save metal for ammunition. They eventually went out of style. In the 1990’s they began being brought back into fashion but as outergarments. These modern corsets are usually not properly constructed so tightlacing would probably be a bad idea unless you have a proper historical corset. Here are some examples of modern corset fashion:
Corset facts
- Many corsets were boned using whale bones and tusks
- Corsets changed shape with new monarchs
- Corsets help improve posture
That’s all for today! Thanks for reading
Sincerely, Me
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