Corset Essay

and practicality. The light green satin ribbon corset, has a back lacing panel, front fastening hook and eye busk, busk lined with white plush at front and is made from real whale bone structuring.

To begin, when analyzing the green ribbon corset, it is such like the stiffening devices in the bodies of men’s coats and waistcoats, and in the waistbands of their breeches, would undoubtedly have aided in the shaping of men’s bodies for fashion. The trade of stay makers grew out of tailor in the latter part of the seventeenth century at the moment when corsets / strays became garments in their own right. It was at this time, that females took over designing and creating gowns for women in the form of mantua’s, but corset creations remained within

There is subtle shaping in the angled side of the front piece.

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the middle of the eighteenth century, corsets became even less suited to the female form and started to look even more masculine. Just like the green ribbon corset, these garments began to take on a rounded form across the front through the addition of a permanently shaped, curved piece of whale-bone placed horizontally across the breast area (Figures 1-2). However, because the horizontal whalebones laid on top of vertical boning were unyielding, these corsets were even more linear and angular, and therefore masculine in form.

This horizontal-boned front evolved and became even more pronounced at the beginning of the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, resulting in corsets with a front section so solidly constructed from fabric, paste and whalebones as to be almost armour-like, just as the green ribbon corset acquires (Sorge-English, 2015) (Figures 3-4). The seaming of the front piece, travels from a point very close to centre front at the bottom of the corset, diagonally across the entire front of the

Figure 3: Stays, 1775-85, Accession Number 57/200, lying on table, revealing permanently contoured front