This is one of my beautiful corsets created with customers own fabric. Whenever someone comes to me and says they have their own fabric i panic a little bit. This was no exception. The customer brought a beautiful light weight silk dress fabric which was nice but not the right weight for a corset. But i say it as a challenge and soildered on. In the end i had to fuse the fabric with interfacing then backed it with coutil(corset linning) i also backed the linning with coutil. We decided not to have a busk which makes it more elegant and less sexy. I am very pleased with the result.A very brief history of the corset
The corset is probably the most controversial garment of the entire history of fashion. Worn by women and at times men throughout the western world from the late renaissance into the late twentieth century, the corset was an essential element of fashionable dress for 400 years. However, history perceive the corset as an ‘’instrument of torture’’ a major cause of ill health and even death. Eroticism and female sexuality
The corset is universally condemned as having being central to the oppression of women. Feminist Historian believe especially in the Victorian era, that the corset functioned as a coercive apparatus through which patriarchal society controlled women and exploited their sexuality to create the feminine ideal. An ideal which is
unnatural and weak. Corseting reduced lung capacity, restricting breathing, hence the ‘heaving bosom’ which meant women would faint with any kind of physical exertion. Perpetuating the idea that woman are weak and therefore subservient to the male. It also served to sexualised women.
It can however be argued that men did not force women to wear corsets there were a number of doctors who argued the dangers of wearing a corset.
Womens reluctance to abandon the corset was closely related to their interest in fashionable dress and being ‘’beautiful’ which can be directly related back to the feminine ideal which would have been set by men.
Women started to abandon corseting with the onset of the first and second world wars when they were required to do jobs traditionally done by men and was further diminished by the womens right movement. The female ideal however still remained and is now achieved through diet and exercise and more radically plastic surgery.
