#corsetry

Making a 1906 Corset (Part 5/5)

And finally, I am happy to say that I finished this project. There was very little left to do from where I left off in my previous post, I just needed to add the eyelets, the binding and the lace. Something that’s quickly done, right? .

While I did finish it all in one sitting, it was quite a hassle to add the eyelets, for some reason moreso than with my previous corsets. But first, I decided to do the binding.

Finishing the raw edges like this is super easy, you just whip stitch a band in place and you’ve got a nice clean edge. But I’m also pretty sure this was my last one layer corset. It is really hard to whip stitch when you only have one layer, I had to constantly go back and fix some stitches because you could see them on the other side.

Next up were the dreaded eyelets, and now let me start this by saying that not only did pretty much nothing work the way I wanted it to, the eyelets are also of really horrible horrible quality. And I didn’t have anything to make holes in the fabric so I had to improvise.

Last time I made a corset, I figured out that if I just hammer the holes in it’s easier than trying to get the fabric to stretch using a nail. So I tried to hammer some holes but it ended up being super uneven. Long story short, it was back to the nail, then pencil, using a bigger utensil every time to widen the hole. Hammering the eyelets in also only worked up until the plastic handle broke, so then my dad made some makeshift eyelet pliers and we went from there. I think I spent about two hours on the eyelets alone, if not more, but then I was finally able to move on to my favorite part of the day - the lace.

Adding lace to a corset is pretty much the easiest step in making a corset. Much easier than adding the lacing. If you have a thread that’s the same color as the lace, it’ll be barely visible and you can pretty much just sew it on however you feel like. I just did a really quick hand stitch and it did the job. Super refreshing after spending so much time on the eyelets!

So here is my final product - it’s not perfect, in fact once I tried it on one of the steel bones kept poking out and I’ll have to fix it, but it fits me perfectly and gives me an incredible silhouette!

I don’t have the right padding just yet, but here are some photos where you can see what I’m talking about -

Now let’s talk crazy myths about tiny waists.

This corset makes me look as if I had a really small waist, especially in the third picture. Even when I looked into the mirror I was incredibly fascinated, and I got my measuring tape just to see what was really going on and what was solely due to the sheer shape of the corset. And guess what? My waist was just about 2cm smaller than it is without a corset. That’s not even an inch. But that just proves that corsets weren’t meant to shrink you down to nothing, I was perfectly able to breathe in it, in fact I wore it for about two hours, I did my hair in it and obviously took all the pictures and didn’t feel like I had to take it off at all when I did. At first it was a little restrictive, as it always is, but once I wore it for a few minuted it actually got really comfortable. Sitting down I noticed it put a lot of pressure on my stomach, normally I wouldn’t have cared but since I have stress related stomach issues at the moment I found it to be a little uncomfortable. But other than that it felt like a tight hug and didn’t hurt at all. This is probably my second most comfortable corset after the Pretty Housemaid! But is that really a fair comparison?

Hope you enjoyed my sewing journey and hope to see you next time when I actually start working on the ✨mysterious dress✨

Part 1|Part 2|Part 3|Part 4

acrossthewavesoftime:

mimicofmodes:

I see our first “crazy corsets” interview for the next season of Bridgerton has dropped. Includes:

• She ate a lot of salmon while in the corset, or maybe before putting it on, and had to throw it up
• “I realized when you wear the corset, you just don’t eat”
• The corset made her tear her shoulder? Somehow?

It’s not that I don’t believe women, or that I don’t believe actors are mistreated by film crews, or anything like that, I just fundamentally do not understand how this could be possible. For one thing, they don’t appear to be tightlacing corsets (most of the women seem to be wearing short stays rather than the hip-length ones the Featheringtons have, although it’s hard to say). For another, her shoulder?? The Bridgerton corsets have teeny tiny little straps.

I haven’t watched the interview, but what is this?

For ‘science’, I once tried to lace myself as tightly in my short stays as possible. The result: I was generally uncomfortable in a sense comparable to, say, trying to squeeze into a bra or a top a size too small, but that was it. Not advisable, but, at least short-term, without any consequences.

Like@mimicofmodes I don’t want to appear patronising and negate women’s experiences, but I am just baffled at how someone would tear a shoulder in short stays or be unable to eat/ get sick after eating in them, because I genuinely can’t fathom how any of those things may be connected to wearing short stays.

My guess is that the fault lies somehow in the construction of the stays, but since they are said to be made to measure, they ideally should fit the actors well.

An aspect of this I genuinely don’t understand is that women have historically worn short stays, and, although I am sure there may have been people who found them uncomfortable because human bodies just are different from another, the vast majority wore them without issue.

This constant complaining about historical undergarments just perpetuates a problematic picture of the women who lived at the period in question because why would they have collectively continued to wear short stays (or any item of clothing, really) if it was extremely uncomfortable to the point of even being a health hazard? Were they too obsessed with being 'fashion conscious’ to care for their health? Certainly not. Additionally, it implies that women were, due to their stays, somehow physically restricted and unable to do anything other than dress up and attend parties. In general, I find Bridgerton’s idea of Regency society a very problematic and unfair (to actual Regency women) one; can you name any of the female characters who has a hobby that isn’t match-making or finding a suitable husband either for herself, or family members? Women travelled, rode horses, created art, danced, hiked and did all manner of other activities wearing (short) stays [Edit: this being somewhat of a rant, I did not think to, but absolutely should mention that short stays were also worn by working women, not only members of the gentry or the aristocracy- clearly, they were not perceived at the time as restrictive even for people who performed physically demanding tasks].

And lastly, what’s always forgotten in those discussions: stays had a very practical raison d'être, namely to provide bust support.

So maybe if we come across interviews like the above, we should not condemn historical items of clothing in general, but rather ask how the ones worn by the actors in question were made, and if they fit them.

Because really, if short stays genuinely caused the actors discomfort (and to such a degree), then short stays themselves aren’t the problem, but the people who clearly made them too small/too big/generally ill-fitting for the person wearing them.

Here’s the interview in Glamour. The relevant quote:

FilmingBridgerton threw Simone into Regency life. She loved the Georgian city of Bath, where they filmed – “Oh, my God. It’s so beautiful. It’s like London as if it was untouched.” But as for wearing a corset? “That was… interesting,” she grins. A wardrobe crew had to help her dress “because when you’re in a corset, you can’t put your shoes on,” but no one warned her to watch what she ate.

“On my first day, I was like, “OK, first day as a leading lady, got to eat lots of food, be really energised.” So, I had this massive portion of salmon and that’s when I needed to be sick, basically because I was wearing the corset. I realised when you wear the corset, you just don’t eat. It changes your body. I had a smaller waist very momentarily. Then the minute you stop wearing it, you’re just back to how your body is. I had a lot of pain with the corset, too, I think I tore my shoulder at one point!”

(I would have linked it from the start but I was reading it on the computer and posting from my tablet.)

The first half makes sense, because yeah, one thing I think we can all agree on is “boots before corset”. The second … what?

To elaborate on something I put in the tags before, theBridgertoncostume designer famously hired Mr Pearl to do all the corsets. I have some issues with the historical inaccuracy of the end results - you can see Nicola Coughlin in a very not Regency corset in the linked article - but the man knows what he’s doing when it comes to making a corset fit a body. He’s the premiere professional corsetiere. He makes corsets for performers who have to do all kinds of athletic dancing, he knows how to get the maximum squish at the waist through fat displacement (which is how all but the tightest of tightlacing works, I cannot stress this enough, it really is not about organ compression) - he’s not taking a corset off the rack or even a corset pattern out of the packet and just pulling the laces tighter even though the hips are too narrow or the waist too low.

I don’t want to downplay the fact that corsets can be uncomfortable. Bras can be uncomfortable! One of my bras is stretched out enough that I should be getting rid of it, the band slides down and then the wires kind of dig in because they’re not in the right place. Even a bra that I’m comfortable in (that is in some ways more comfortable than not wearing a bra because of the bust support) I can still Feel when it’s on and I still feel a sudden “ooh!” when I take it off. Literally anything that compresses the body elicits this feeling. Clothes are inherently not comfortable.

But I digress. This is all separate from the fact that even the longer corsets in Bridgertondon’t seem to be producing the kind of tightlaced shape that we see on Lily James in Cinderellaor Emmy Rossum in PotO(which makes sense because only Lady Featherington’s gowns follow the body down the torso).

I don’t know what the deal is. I don’t want to claim that these opinions aren’t real/honest because that sounds ridiculous. But the “wearing the corset” link goes to the Emma Stone interview where she says she couldn’t sit down in The Favourite right next to a photo of her sitting down in The Favourite. “I couldn’t eat at all, I just sipped water for three days straight, my body was immobilized,” is good promotional material on multiple levels.

“Once we know what to look for, retouching becomes quite obvious. It is there in the smooth cheeks of Edwardian women, in the impossibly sloped shoulders of debutantes, in the famous waist of Polaire.”

The camera has been lying for over 100 years. Read more…

Jeder Tag begann für eine Frau damit die Mieder anzuziehen, die ihr Mann ausgesucht hatte.

Lüstern sah er ihr dabei zu, wie sie sich abmühte ihren Körper in die steifen, engen Mieder zu pressen. Bereitwillig half er dabei diese zu verschließen, wobei er natürlich immer die engste Position von eventuell vorhandenen Hakenreihen wählte. Er liebte es seine Frau in Nylon eingezwängt zu wissen, behindert von Stangen und gequält von beißenden Stoffen. Auch wenn er in der Arbeit war und seine Frau nicht sehen konnte, so war er doch erregt bei dem Gedanken, wie seine Frau in jedem Moment des Tages, und mit der Zeit immer mehr, unter den festen Panzern zu leiden hatte. Dazu musste sie auch den ganzen Tag in high heels durchstehen, auch wenn ihre Füße noch so schmerzten. Als Verkäuferin musste sie fast den ganzen Tag stehen, konnte sich höchstens bücken, was durch die steifen Mieder aber auch eine schmerzhafte Bewegung war. Die dünnen, straff an den Strapsen fest gezurrten Strümpfe ließen sie frieren. Die hochgepressten, stramm in unelastischem Nylon verpackten Brüste schmerzten sie auch mit der Zeit.

Abends, nachdem beide wieder zu Hause waren, hatte sie natürlich die Kleidung und Schuhe weiterhin zu tragen, um ihren Mann immer erregter zu machen, bis er seine aufgestaute Lust an diesem perfekten Wesen abreagierte und dabei nur den Eingang zu ihrer Lusthöhle freilegte, um die festen Mieder auf seiner nackten Haut zu spüren, während er sich höchste Lust verschaffte.

Erst vor dem schlafen durfte sie die Mieder, Strümpfe und Schuhe ablegen und dann konnte er, zutiefst zufrieden, die vielen tiefroten Druckstellen und Einkerbungen auf dem nackten Körper begutachten, bevor sie ein dünnes Nylonnachthemd anziehen durfte.

Während sie sich im Bett über die kurze Zeit der Freiheit erfreute, überlegte er sich wie er seiner Frau auch den nächsten Tag so gestaltete, dass es seiner Lust dienlich war…

Mieder durften keine Falten haben, müssen die Brüste in einer unnatürlich hohen Position festhalten, müssen den Leib völlig flach formen.

Das bedeutete für die Trägerin:

- steife, unbequeme Mieder

- schmerzende Brüste durch das heftige pressen und hochdrücken

- schmerzende Schultern durch einschneidende, unelastischen Träger

- heftige Schmerzen im Magen und gesamten Unterleib

- langwierige Ankleideprozedur, oft nur mit Hilfe kräftiger Unterstützung durch ihren Mann realisierbar

- aufgescheuerte Haut an den Miederrändern und durch Haken und Schnürungen, die nur langsam heilten, weil die Mieder ja täglich getragen werden mussten

- Behinderung bei vielen Bewegungen, vor allem beim Sitzen, wenn sich die Miederstangen in das Fleisch bohren

- Hitzestau im Sommer, denn hohe Temperaturen waren keine Ausrede die Mieder zu lockern, oder gar wegzulassen

- den ganzen Tag die auf sie gerichteten Blicke hinzunehmen, die schamlos und lüstern ihren umgeformten Körper betrachteten

Jahrelang waren diese Korseletts in den Miederkatalogen zu finden. Präsentiert von glücklich lächelnden Frauen. Formkräftig und zeitaufwendig beim anziehen waren es beim betrachten aber auch die ersten feuchten Bubenträume in den 60er Jahren.

Ich weiß ja, aus eigener Erfahrung, wie wunderbar und lustfördernd sich solche Mieder am Körper anfühlen. In keiner Minute des Tages (vielleicht auch nachts) kann Man die Enge und Steifigkeit vergessen. Man fühlt die Behinderung und die Schmerzen die sich erregend steigern.

Aber natürlich will das nicht jede Frau und empfindet diese Mieder als Torturm.

Warum aber wurden sie dann vor gar nicht so langer Zeit von beinahe allen Frauen jeden Tag getragen???

1 Weil es ihr Mann von ihnen verlangte?

2 Weil es die Mode verlangte?

3 Weil es die anderen auch machten?

4 0Weil sie die Männer verführen wollten?

5 Weil sie es, so wie ich, genossen?

6 Weil sie von den Schmerzen erregt wurden?

Was ist eure Meinung dazu (1-6)?

So schön zu sehen, dass es auch Frauen gibt, die es genießen die Lust durch mehrere Lagen fester Mieder zu steigern.

Ich genieße es, als Mann, ja auch und kann es nachempfinden. Aber warum kommen nur so wenige Frauen auf diese Gedanken?

anna-doll:

anna-doll:

“Kühl und komfortabel”, zumindest laut Werbung. Ich glaube, dass diese Mieder höchst unbequem waren, was aber die Aufgabe von Mieder ist.

Der Hüftgürtel mit der starren Planchette vorne hat sich doch sicher schmerzhaft in den Magen gebohrt wenn die Frau nicht ordentlich gesessen ist.