Talk:History of corsets

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 August 2020 and 4 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sherly-ann-Ville-gas. Peer reviewers: Nilmariliz, Adriana.Santiago16.

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Standard Reference Books

Hi Wikipedians! I studied corsetry as part of my theatre costume studies at Wimbledon School of Art (where you train to make any piece of clothing from any period in time). If you are seriously interested in the subject I would recommend Norah Waugh's book Corsets and Crinolines, it was the standard reference text given for the subject - certainly in the UK. Also Elizabeth Ewing's Fashion in Underwear (but I think I recognize some of the illustrations from the book in the article already). The article is for the most part a really interesting read - though there are still blips from a previous editing era - the occasional non-sense sentences which require Time, and alas research, to sort out. ixo (talk) 09:12, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Iron Corsets and Victorian Era

The item on Iron Corsets gives the dates of useage as 1500s to 1700s, and then says that it is a Victorian Era style. The Victorian Era is so named for the reing of Queen Victoria, which began in 1819. This portion is clearly factually inaccurate because of this.

I am unfamiliar beyond that with the Iron Corset. However, I am changing "Victorian Era" to "Tudor Era", which matches the dates posted. I assume that the original writer of the statement actually meant Elizabethan Era, which is often substituted for Tudor Era, though Elizabeth was of course only one in a line of Tudor rulers. --unsigned comment by Mathlaura13:01, 17 August 2005

I don't think it's even mentioned in the current version of the article, but for the record, the iron or steel corset seems to have been mainly an early 17th-century thing.. Churchh 18:12, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

This article is seriously sub-standard

I haven't been policing this article and Haabet has had a free hand with it, enriching it with his inimitable fractured English, weird illustrations, and dour view of corsets. I'm completely over-burdened at the moment, so all I can say is, I protest. Zora 00:37, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

I will move it to this page. Do you acceptance that?

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Corset:History Haabet 09:39, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Isn't there any quality control there? You know it's not a real book, Haabet. Couldn't you just put it up on your personal website? Zora 10:16, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

I have make this sub-standard because I hope you would make it better. But this subject are not suited to wikipedia.

Any body can delete my mistakes on my personal website.Haabet 12:59, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Deleting some of the worst gibberish

The article is still a mess, but I deleted some of the strangest prose and most disturbing pictures. Zora 08:11, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Now I've corrected some of the worst errors. It still could use some better pictures (esp. early periods), something more about post-1910s... Has it occurred to anyone that the "Overview" contains almost more information than each of the sub-chapters? If I had the nerve right now, I'd shorten the overview a bit more and flesh out the chapters. Madame

The overview was originally mostly taken over from "Tightlacing" as a bandaid to paper over some of the problems created by Haabet, but it contains some good material... Churchh 12:53, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Added and swapped in some new Victorian pics -- maybe the previous pruning was a little too drastic there. Churchh 15:30, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Changing template

The page still needs some cleanup, but I don't really think it's in desperate need of "expert attention" like it used to be... Churchh 12:55, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Major rewrite and reorg

OK, I worked this page over. It still needs more pictures, links, and info, but at least it's respectable now, and a good framework for any further work. Haabet, hands off, PLEASE. Zora 08:02, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

The straight-front corset, also known as the swan-bill corset and the S-bend corset, was worn from ca. 1900 to the early 1910s. Its name is derived from the very rigid, straight busk inserted in the center front of the corset. This corset forced the torso forward and made the hips protrude.

The straight-front corset was in use from 1875, but first in fashion i year 1900 by a fashion wave which surprise the industry.

I have look and hunt after a old image of that very rigid, straight busk from this era, but I can only get modern drawings.

But I have straight-front corset images, completely without busk.

I think that bush is a fetishi-myth or a misunderstand.missehund vovkat Haabet 09:19, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I was under the impression (from the Museum of Costume in Bath, although I was there a few years ago and might be wrong; which is why I'm posting it here instead of editing the article) that the S-bend corsets began as 'health corsets' that were shaped to improve breathing. It was quickly discovered that they could be tight-laced into the characteristic S-bend. Does anyone else know about this? --Principessa 15:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

The word S-bend is use of many corsets. But the straight front corset was a health corset, but nearly all corsets was health corsets! ;-)

As the straight front corset was a health corset is well-documented in many patents and in this French source. http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Le_corset%3B_%C3%A9tude_physiologique_et_pratique_1900:129 And in english: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:LIVRE_D%27OR_DE_FINCAILLES_ET_DU_MARIAGEpage259a.jpg in German: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:GutesKorsettSchlechtesKorsett2.gif

straight front corset is constantly in use. if you will have more I can get that.Håbet 20:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Disputed:

1. . 'Corseted ballet dress, 1855 are stays, not corsets. (the stays was in use from about 1500 to about 1910),
2. . The dominant behind disappear in 1909, because the corset go down of the thighs, as the hip had need to tip.
3. . Gaches-Sarraute say as the Edwardian corset was a Victorian pregnancy corset. And a patent say as that corset was from 1875.
4. Typical 1869 corset, that was a news in 1869, that corset was different from the corsets before.
5. After about 1908, the small corseted waist started to fall out of fashion. All informations say as the waist was tight to about 1911 and been higher and fall out of fashion in 1919. Håbet 07:37, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Haabet, the word "corset" began to be commonly used in the English language before the year 1855. And as far as I can figure out, you seem to think that the dancers' colored bodice thingies are the corsets themselves, but they're not -- they're prettified and citified ballet-house versions of continental European peasant garments; the actual corsets would be UNDER their outer clothes. Churchh 08:59, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

The girls use a girls type of this stay: Image:PL_IIIcut.gif Håbet 13:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Haabet, plase don't insert your comments in the middle of mine, so people can't tell which is which. In any case, Image:PL_IIIcut.gif depicts a classic mid-18th century type of "stays" worn underneath the clothes, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the pseudo-peasanty outergarments worn by the 1855 ballet dancers. Churchh 16:11, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

4 - If you don't like the word "typical", then write "newly fashionable", but I don't see that it makes much difference.

The problems is the long periode by many various corsets. Håbet 13:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I really have no idea what that's supposed to mean. The words are English, but they don't add up to a sentence. Churchh 16:11, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

5 - Obviously, many women continued to lace up well into the 1910's (or even beyond), but I've seen elsewhere (in an offline fashion history book) the assertion that 1908 was the first year that there were incipient signs that the ice was beginning to crack. Churchh 08:59, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I have a patent which raise the chest without tighten the waist. But it is from 1909 and a other from 1911. Håbet 13:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

That's nice -- you really shouldn't rely so much on patents, since they're attempted innovations (many unsuccessful), and don't necessarily give you a good idea of what's TYPICAL during a certain time-period. Churchh 16:11, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

But the problems is complex. The tight corset was a part of the ball-dress, in the ball the girl have a short contact by few boys. In that few minutes she had need of a get a man, or ende as spinster. And the familie have need to support the spinsters. The familie have a interest as pay as the girl get a narrow waist, and a big expensive dress. But by the armament to WW1 all can get a unskilled job. The women's magazines writed about education. But all woman in Denmark used girdles and corslets i 1960, then the tights(panty hose) arrived, as the corset was not lost but change in the fabric, in the 1920s. In 1909 been the corset to long as woman be able to shit, but first in 1913 the corset get a hatch to shit. What do the woman in the era from 1909 to 1913?Håbet 13:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea how the above semi-disturbed rambling ruminations have much to do with the editing of the article page... Churchh 16:11, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

The edits I just made

Okay, I just removed Image:Ballet_1855.jpg (since it apparently was giving people the idea that the pseudo-peasantish colored outer bodice thingies the dancers were wearing were the actual corsets, which they in fact weren't); I removed the word "typical" from the 1869 corset image description; and I added the word "slowly" to corsets beginning to fall out of favor, since obviously most women didn't make any sudden drastic changes to their habitual practices during the year 1908 itself.

I then changed the "disputed" tag to a section-cleanup on the Edwardian section, since that's where the remaining issues (whose accuracy I don't know how to evaluate) seem to be. I also took Image:Coronet Corset Co.gif out of the gallery, since this image nicely sums up the Victorian/Edwardian change, and it doesn't really communicate very effectively at a maximum pixel dimension of 120 pixels...

This should resolve most issues. I know absolutely nothing about Gaches-Sarraute, so you're going to have to debate that with somebody else. Obviously, the Victorian section now needs a few additional pics, but Haabet, please don't try to add images of internal organs being squished (which are not really too relevant for this page), or strikingly innovative patent applications (for the reasons I outlined above) -- especially not crudely colorized patent illustrations (which are often inadvertently humorous). Churchh 16:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

hello. not sure how all this thing works, but it's a bit misleading to say corsets are worn only by fetishists re-enactors and for back support. I'm into none of these things, and I tightlace purely because I love the shape I get from doing so. I'm far from alone in this.

Correct etymology

I corrected the etymology - both the cited source and my OED agree that the O.F. cors comes direct from the Latin corPus (with a 'P', not a 'B'). Both sources point at other words with the same etymology, and this seems to have been misunderstood to mean cors vectors through corps; as far as I find out, it doesn't. Fuchsia Groan 10:35, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

New text from the Corset-page

The corset is a garment that has undergone many changes over the years. Originally, the garment we now know as the corset was known as stays in the early 16th century. It was a simple bodice, with tabs at the waist, stiffened by horn, buckram, and whalebone.(Steele 6) The center front was further reinforced by a busk made of ivory, wood, or metal. It was most often laced from the back, and was, at first, a garment reserved for the aristocracy. Stays took a different form in the 18th century, whale bone began to be used more, and there was more boning used in the garment. The shape of the stays changed as well. The stays were low and wide in the front, while in the back they reached up to the neck. The straps of the stays were attached in the back and tied at the front sides. The pupose of 18th century stays was to emphasise the bust, while drawing the shoulders back. At this time, the eyelets were reinforced with stitches, and were not placed across from one another, but staggered. This allowed the stays to be spiral laced. One end of the stay lace is inserted and knotted in the bottom eyelet, the other end is wound through the stays' eyelets and tightened on the top. To tighten the laces the wearer had to hold onto something, as this method of lacing pulled the wearer from side to side as it was tightened.(Steele, 22) At this time, there were two other variants of stays, jumps, which were looser stays with attached sleeves, like a jacket, and corsets.(Steele 27) Corsets were originally quilted waistcoats, worn by French women as an alternative to stiff corsets.(Steele,29)They were only quilted linen, laced in the front,and unboned. This garment was meant to be worn on informal occasions, while stays were worn for court dress. In the 1790s, stays fell out of fashion. This developement coincided with the French Revolution, and the adoption of neoclassical styles of dress. Interestingly, it was the men, Dandies, who began to wear corsets.(Steele 36)The fashion persisted thorough the 1840s, though after 1850 men who wore corsets claimed they needed them for "back pain" (Steele 39) Stays went away in the late 18th cetury, but the corset remained. Corsets in the early 19th century lengthened to the hip, the lower tabs replaced by gussets at the hip. Room was made for the bust in front with more gussets, and the back lowered. The shoulder straps disappeared in the 1840s for normal wear.(Waugh 77)In the 1820s, fashion changed again, with the waistline lowered back to almost the natural position. Corsets began to be made with some padding and boning. Corsets began to be worn by all classes of society. Some women made their own, while others bought their corsets. Corsets were one of the first mass produced garments for women. Corsets began to be more heavily boned in the 1840s. By 1850, steel boning became popular. With the advent of metal eyelets, tight lacing became possible. The position of the eyelets changed, they were now situated across from one another at the back. The front was now fastened with a metal busk in front. Corsets were mostly white. The corsets of the 1850s-1860s were shorter than the corsets of the 1800s through 1840s. This was because of a change in the silhouette of women's fashion. The 1850s and 60s emphasized the hoopskirt. After the 1860s, when the hoop fell out of style, the corset became longer to mold the abdomen, exposed by the new lines of the princess or cuirass style. During the Edwardian period, the straight front corset was introduced. This corset was straight in front, with a pronounced curve at the back that forced the upper body forward, and the derriere out. This style was worn from 1900-1908 (Steele 144) The corset reached its longest length in the early 20th century. The longline corset at first reached from the bust down to the upper thigh. There was also a style of longline corset that started under the bust, and necessitated the wearing of a brasserie. This style was meant to complement the new sillhouette. It was a boneless style, much closer to a modern girdle than the traditional corset. The longline style was abandoned during World War I.

The corset fell from fashion in the 1920s in Europe and America, replaced by girdles and elastic brassieres, but survived as an article of costume. Originally an item of lingerie, the corset has become a popular item of outerwear in the fetish, BDSM and goth subcultures.

In the fetish and BDSM literature, there is often much emphasis on tightlacing. In this case, the corset may still be underwear rather than outerwear.

There was a brief revival of the corset in the late 1940s and early 1950s, in the form of the waist cincher sometimes called a "waspie". This was used to give the hourglass figure dictated by Christian Dior's 'New Look'. However, use of the waist cincher was restricted to haute couture, and most women continued to use girdles. This revival was brief, as the New Look gave way to a less dramatically-shaped silhouette.

Since the late 1980s, the corset has experienced periodic revivals, which have usually originated in haute couture and which have occasionally trickled through to mainstream fashion. These revivals focus on the corset as an item of outerwear rather than underwear. The strongest of these revivals was seen in the Autumn 2001 fashion collections and coincided with the release of the film Moulin Rouge!, the costumes for which featured many corsets as characteristic of the era.

Similarly, other films have used these garments as costume features, generally to suggest a period effect, as in Van Helsing, where Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale) wears an ornate underbust corset as part of her costume. Sometimes this is used for humorous purposes, as when Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) almost suffocates from wearing a tight corset in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. One distinctive feature has been to portray them in combination with catsuits, as in Star Trek: Voyager where Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) throughout the series wears catsuits with contained built-in corsets, or Underworld, where Selene (Kate Beckinsale) wears a black leather corset over matching latex catsuit. 10:24, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Beware of beautifying depictions!

Between 1830 and 1910 it was common to depict women and girls with a much narrower waist then they could credibly have had. Although women and girls had been portrayed with a narrower waist than they really had in the 18th century this phenomenon reached new heights after 1830. Also, the relatively easy mass-production of images means that many more pictures are available today. This is how they where frequently depicted:

¤ Toddlers where depicted as if they already had a narrower waist than those of boys the same age.
¤ School age girls where depicted with a waist as narrow as those of most present-day adult corset-wearers.
¤ Teenage girls where depicted as if they had already tightlaced considerably.
¤ Adult women where depicted with a waist close to or even beyond the narrowest waist there are reliable evidence of!

As previously stated these depictions are not historically credible. Some of them are not medically credible either. Personally, I see no reason to think that women would naturally have a narrower waist than men. It only seems that way because the hips are wider and the beasts protrudes. This is the real situation during the period as far as I know:

¤ Until the age of seven or eight girls wore bodices allowing their trunks to look as they naturally did. Please note that there are no differences in body shape between boys and girls until puberty, it is just the genitals themselves that differs.
¤ From the age of seven or eight the bodices where gradually made tighter and stiffer. So by the age of twelve girls had a noticeably narrower waist than present-day girls of the same age with comparable BMI.
¤ From the age of twelve or thirteen girls whore training corsets. These where more body-shaping than the bodices previously worn but more flexible than the corsets worn by adult women.
¤ From the age of eighteen they could wear adult-type corsets. Few women tightlaced, that is, continued to decrease their waists after reaching adulthood.

I think non-retouched photos should be used as illustrations whenever available. If no such photos can be found modern photos of extant clothing items should be used. Many of the bad side effects of corset wear where ether exaggerated or only affected the very few women which tried to tightlace too fast. Yet, I don’t deny that women where weakened by wearing corsets due to the smaller amount of space allowed for their internal organs. (Although the same process happens when a woman is pregnant it is a scientific fact that women are physically weakened during pregnancy.) The stiffness of the corsets also forced them to be more physically passive then necessary. Some present-day women consider the bra to be oppressive but I think it is a great improvement compared to the corsets of the 19th century. A properly sized bra does not squeeze together any body parts and does not restrict the motion of anything else than the breasts. That is what this clothing item is for: to restrict the motions of the breasts but nothing else.

2009-09-05 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

Good point! Commercial art of the days, even it happened in fine arts which should often have been more realistic, are not very reliable, (for ex. attempts to flatter in portraiture) as they represent exegerrated and idealized depictions of human torso, women, children etc. Those depiction have so little to do with reality as Barbie dolls of today depict female body, not reliable historical source. Bialosz (talk) 09:06, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Edit

I am removing the scentence 'Stories about women with broken ribs, having ribs removed, and causing fatal injury to themselves through tight lacing are greatly exaggerated and apocryphal.' because it is entirely an opinion and has no citation. The whole paragraph needs to be edited. Gwynt (talk) 21:54, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Removed substandard external links: advertisement spam, insecure connection, etc.

I removed all external links, for variety of reasons, misleading labeling, spam, security threat, etc. I list them here:

1 link: it is not a link to a museum exhibit website, as it supposed to do based on the description, but directed to website bad.example.com which is not secure connection, which means isn't safe, in addition to be not relating to the subject of the article: secure connection failure which means privacy can be compromised, vulnerability to eavesdropper.(security threat)

2 link:it was not a link to "antique corset gallery," as is the link title read, but link to a private business, wedding photography business (spam)

3 link: mislabelled link which lead to private website dealing with e-commerce themes, nothing to do with corsets, and website under construction (spam)

4 link: private website and blog of a person who is costumer, dancer and event organiser (tours etc.)spam

5 link: error 404

6 link: youtube video, cheesy advert, gives advice to men how to buy lingerie for women, lingerie measuring, lingerie modeling images, talk about how lingerie can add self confidence in women etc.substandard source, not relating to subject, and spam.

Not even a single link was a good standard link which could contribute to the subject. Bialosz (talk) 08:52, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Removed flags for multiple issues, needs a fresh review

I removed the flags at the top of the article for multiple issues, original research, needs citations. They were put there in 2007, 11 years ago. The article has citations. I do not know this topic well enough to judge if original analysis not supported by any reference remains. I formatted some of the references, and found isbn for some of the books. I also made Etymology its own section. Without a section title, the text appears in the lead for the article, and that is the wrong place for it. --Prairieplant (talk) 05:46, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Need help finding correct page in a source

I tried to find more about Gleason's Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, a magazine from the early 1850s. It is cited once in this article, on page 412 in the last issue of 1854, before the magazine's name was changed. The citation as I found it had not title for an article, only the journal title, so I made a place-holder title because I used cite journal format for the reference. I found an online copy of every page here, where one can turn to read each page of the run from 1851 to the end of 1854. The journal pages were numbered consecutively from the first issue to the last issue, not re-started at 1 with each new issue or each new year. I do not find the quote in the article on page 412. I left the reference in place, expecting that the correct page number will be found by some editor. The online copy does have a search feature. I am trying one word at a time to see if the quote is on a different page. If it is in a different source, that is beyond me. Any help in this search is appreciated. --Prairieplant (talk) 06:20, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

The quotation in the article is this: The women of the French court saw this corset as "indispensable to the beauty of the female figure." The phrase 'French court' was found once at the link I posted above, on page 367, but the rest of the sentence says nothing about the beauty of the female figure. The phrase is in a sentence about a musical instrument, a viol. Any ideas on the source of the quote? Or which editor added the quote with the wrong citation, or the citation with the wrong quotation? --Prairieplant (talk) 06:26, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

"Straight front" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Straight front. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 September 29#Straight front until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 08:50, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Added a citation

I added this citation under the "transition to the Victorian" section:

References

Corsets, Stays, Bodys, Girdles, etc

This article needs clarification in the beginning as it makes an incorrect assertion that corsets as an undergarment have been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. They have only around since roughly the 1820’s. 131.93.164.72 (talk) 20:04, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Tone is dreadful

Needs total rewrite. Oliviasjhall (talk) 07:52, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Have to agree that the article does need a major rewrite, but unfortunately it is one of those articles that attracts a lot of, shall we say, people with *rather specialist interests* and any rewrite would be a MAJOR undertaking. So basically, yes, we know the article needs improvement, but it's a case of being able to spare time and research (there's a LOT of material out there) and energy for arguing with the specialist-interests crowd over why they can't prioritise their favourite (ie, sensationalist) "published sources" over other "published sources" that aren't quite as titiliating. I did improve the Metal corset article to Good Article status, but ATM I don't have the energy to tackle this more major article. Mabalu (talk) 18:30, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I've removed and rewritten the most biased and poorly-sourced claims, hopefully can find time to expand on this later. Luiysia (talk) 16:21, 27 December 2023 (UTC)