History of corsets

A pair of bodies or stays, as they were known at the time, first became popular in sixteenth-century Europe, and created in the wearer a conical shape with a flattened bust.

The meaning of it as a "stiff supporting so constricting undergarment for the waist, worn chiefly by women to shape the figure," dates from 1795.

[6] The term "jumps," deriving from the French word jupe "short jacket," referred to stays without boning, which were less structured and typically laced in the front.

"[10] In the Elizabethan era, pairs of bodies were typically made out of layered fabrics like linen and silk, starched, and stiffened with whalebone.

It was carved into a thin knife shape and inserted into the bodice, then fastened and held into place by laces, so that the busk could be easily removed and replaced.

The front of the corset was typically covered by a "stomacher," a stiff, V-shaped structure that was worn on the abdomen for decorative purposes.

[citation needed] The most common type of corset in the 18th century was an inverted conical shape, often worn to create a contrast between a rigid quasi-cylindrical torso above the waist and heavy full skirts below.

During and shortly following the French Revolution, rationalists and classicists criticized the glorification of an artificial body shape, created by stays, as more beautiful than the natural human form.

Short stays were appropriate to wear beneath the empire silhouette gowns of the period, which were loose and unrestrictive below the chest and created a long, columnar line which referenced the clothing of Ancient Greece and Rome.

[7]By the 1820s, the empire silhouette fell out of fashion and what we now recognize as corsets returned, along with the elaborate, structured gowns associated with the Victorian era.

The advent of steel boning, as well as metal clasps and eyelets, meant that these corsets could be tightened significantly tighter than the stays of the 18th century without damaging the garment.

Prior to this era, each corset was hand made by one person from start to finish, either at home or by individual craftsmen, called staymakers.

[15] The diarist Emily Eden recorded that she had to obtain a silver "husk" before accompanying her brother to India because a humid climate rusted the usual steel and spoilt the garment.

[16] The dress reform movement of the 1850s and 1860s opposed corsets and advocated against their use, particularly the high-fashion trend of tightlacing to achieve ever-smaller waistlines.

While support for fashionable dress contested that corsets maintained an upright, ‘good figure’, as a necessary physical structure for moral and well-ordered society, dress reformists contested that women’s fashions were not only physically detrimental but “the results of male conspiracy to make women subservient by cultivating them in slave psychology.”[17][18] They believed a change in fashions could change the position of women, allowing for more social mobility, independence from men and marriage, the ability to work for wages, and better physical movement and comfort.

Western women were thought to be weaker and more prone to birth complications than the ostensibly more vigorous, healthier, "primitive" races who did not wear corsets.

Make a bonfire of the cruel steels that has lorded it over the contents of the abdomen and thorax for so many thoughtless years, and heave a sigh of relief: for your 'emancipation,' I assure you, has from this moment begun.

The glamorous Dior designs symbolized a return to femininity under post-war American prosperity.By the 1960s, the advent of hippie culture and youth rebellion led the wasp-waisted silhouette to fall out of favor.

Dieting, plastic surgery (modern liposuction was invented in the mid-1970s), and exercise became the preferred methods of achieving a thin waist.

[28] The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s brought with it midriff-revealing styles like the crop top, and many women chose to forgo supportive undergarments like girdles or corsets, preferring a more athletic figure.

[29] The corset has largely fallen out of mainstream fashion since the 1920s in Europe and North America, replaced by girdles and elastic brassieres, but has survived as an article of costume.

In the early 2020s, corset-inspired tops and dresses began to trend as part of the regencycore aesthetic, inspired by television series like Bridgerton and The Gilded Age.