One 18th-century corset that survives has 162 pieces of whalebone. In time, more bones were added on the sides. In the beginning a blade of whalebone, called a busk, was set in a pocket running up the front. The strict, boned corset was to be the norm until about World War I. One writer observed, 'As for her fair Breasts, they are half imprisoned, and half free and do their utmost endeavor to procure their absolute liberty.' One thinks of Samuel Johnson declining to visit David Garrick’s green room, lest the 'white bubbies' of the actresses overexcite him.Īlthough tightly laced bodices had been de rigueur since tailoring first began, the durable fashion seems to have been introduced by Catherine de Medici. When fashion called for décolletage, as it frequently did during the 400 years of the corset’s life, the breasts swelled appetizingly above the close-fitting bodice. The sense of discipline, the approach to an ideal achieved by taking a few inches off the waist, lifting the breasts and thrusting them forward-such were the rewards of discomfort. Montaigne compared women’s courage in accepting the rigors of corsetry to that of gladiators and saints. Though tight lacing was probably never so bizarre as cartoons of the day suggest, then as now there was much talk of fashion victims. To some they were no doubt oppressive, although conferring gentility to others, they rendered that matchless sense of being perfectly well dressed. In a handsomely illustrated history of the corset, Valerie Steele, the author of Fifty Years of Fashion (1997) and the editor of the journal Fashion Theory, demonstrates how various were the kinds of corsets, the ways they were worn, and the meanings they conveyed to their wearers.

Since the Renaissance, when clothes were first cut and tailored rather than simply draped, aristocratic women-later those of all classes, and men too-improved the body underneath with corsets that affirmed the wearer’s respectability and sex appeal. Even in the queen’s last moments, uncorseted, her body assumed the posture that tightly laced stays had exacted throughout her life.

In all of Vigée Marie Lebrun’s portraits of her, whether in shepherdess muslins or court finery, the breasts are pushed high and the back is proudly straight. $35Īs Marie Antoinette rode in a cart to her execution, hair cropped and hands tied behind her back, the artist Jacques Louis David, who was in the crowd, did a quick, cruel sketch of her in profile, back arched, and bosom thrust forward but drooping as it would not have done had she been wearing a corset. $39.95īy Jane Farrell-Beck and Colleen Gau.

The Corset by Valerie Steele