Friday Video: Roller Skating in a Corset and Bustle

Loretta reports:

Many readers express dismay at the clothing of the post-Regency 19th century, and how restrictive it seems. There's an assumption that women couldn't do much while wearing corsets and layer upon layer of undergarments. Dress historians and re-enactors, however, have shown us otherwise. For example, some years ago I attended a talk by Astrida Schaeffer, during which she showed photos of Victorian women (whose clothing made it clear they were wearing corsets—not to mention all the other layers) performing various outdoor activities.

My post the other day about bustles drew more of the dismayed comments on social media, e.g., women couldn't do any work in these clothes. And so, naturally, I hunted for evidence that women did not spend all their time lying on sofas in a swoon. I think this video, of a lady skating while wearing a corset and a bustle and the elaborate dress of what seems to be the 1880s, offers a good demonstration. Gina White's even wearing Victorian-era roller skates, which apparently aren't easy to maneuver.

Video:

Roller skating in a bustle dress and a corset Part 1, Beauty from Ashes, Gina White

Image above left is a still from the video.

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Fashions for July 1875

Travel & Promenade Dress July 1875

Loretta reports:

For a perspective on this month’s fashion plate, I offer a quote from Jane Ashelford’s The Art of Dress.

“A narrower silhouette appeared in 1874, introducing a sheath-like bodice which fitted over the waist and hips, thus necessitating a new style of corset. The flat effect down the front of the skirt was further enhanced by tapes inside the skirt which pulled it closer to the body. In conjunction with this tightening of the silhouette, the bustle grew smaller and was positioned lower down, where the fullness of the skirt extended into a long train.”

Travel & Promenade Dress Description

Description cont'd

Fashions for April 1833

April 1833 Ball Dress

Loretta reports:

Since my new series, Difficult Dukes, is set in 1833, and we’re up to the 1830s in the monthly fashion prints, it made sense to offer sample fashions from that year. You’ve seen enough of the 1830s images by now to be familiar with the immense sleeves and lofty approach to hair styles and headwear. These plates, published in The Lady's Magazine and Museum (Improved series, Enlarged Vol. 2), uses the high quality French engravings, rather than some of the cheap copies we see elsewhere.

You will notice, in the ball dress description, that the corset-style top can be a different color from the dress. Indeed, any of these dresses might have been made in other colors and fabrics, with individual touches. Somewhere there may be a fashion plate with the dress in two colors, since the engravings were hand colored, and the publisher would have employed more than one artist.

April 1833 Walking Dress

Dress description

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

A 19thc Maternity Robe & Corset On Display at the Museum at FIT

Susan reporting,

As I've written here before, one of my favorite small museums in NYC is the Museum at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology). Their fashion exhibitions are drawn from their own extensive collection, and always offer a thoughtful take on the history - past and present - of clothing.

Their current exhibition is The Body: Fashion and Physique, and once again the curators challenge visitors to consider conventions and assumptions related to fashion. This time, it's how fashion distorts, contains, or reveals the human body. Examples include the exaggerated silhouette of an 1880s bustle, the balloon-shaped sleeves and full skirts to make the waist smaller by comparison in an 1830s dress, the sculptural 1950s ballgowns of Charles James, the babydoll shifts worn by a waifish Twiggy in the 1960s, or the enormous shoulder pads of the 1980s that mimicked the ideal gym-body of the time (and yes, a recording of a perky Olivia Newton commanded us to "get physical...physical!" in that gallery.) In many cases, the garment was shown side by side with the undergarments - whether stays, corsets, or girdles - required to achieve the "proper" shape.

Some of the more interesting garments addressed adjusting fashion to conform to the wearer's bodies rather than the other way around. For women in wheelchairs, designers are creating clothes that are tailored to a sitting figure, as well as shirts and jackets with special Velcro closures along the seams to make dressing easier.

But most striking to me were these two garments, above, both 19th century maternity wear. The brightly colored robe on the left, c1860, is loose-fitting, cheerful, and comfortable, and there are plenty of modern mothers-to-be who'd wear this now. Yet as the placard noted, the robe was for a 19thc woman's "confinement": "Aptly named, confinement was a 19th-century custom dictating that expectant mothers should remain inside their homes when they could no longer conceal their pregnant bellies, which were inappropriate for public display."

There's nothing cheerful about the second garment, which is almost a visual representation of "confinement." It's a maternity corset, c1900. From the placard: "Rather than having one line of lacing up the back, [this corset] has five lines, making it adjustable at the sides. Maternity corsets were intended to help women camouflage their changing bodies, but they were also considered necessary to give support to the wearer's back and belly."

Such corsets were targeted by 19thc dress reformers, who accused the undergarments of causing miscarriages as well as undersized and deformed babies. But as fashion historian Valerie Steele (who is also the director and chief curator of the Museum at FIT) points out in her book The Corset: A Cultural History (Yale University Press, 2001), it's often difficult to separate attacks on corsets from attacks on the mother who wore them. Any imperfect child was the fault of the mother. If she'd worn a corset while pregnant, she was faulted for her vanity and selfishness, and her unwomanly lack of maternal concern - charges that were especially potent in the era of the Suffragists.

"Attacks on the corset were often linked to ideological campaigns in favor of motherhood, reflecting fears that if women broke away from their domestic sphere, the entire social order would be threatened. The German literature on dress reform is especially notable for its antifeminist bias....In France, an extremely low birthrate led to widespread fears about depopulation, but motherhood was also extolled in Britain and America."

Yet as the museum's placard noted, there were also benefits to such corsets. For 19thc women who had endured closely-spaced, multiple pregnancies and suffered from complications like a prolapsed uterus, adjustable maternity corsets like this one could actually have done more good than harm, offering support for both the abdomen and the back. Nor have maternity corsets vanished in the 21st century, either: while boning and lacing have been replaced by Spandex, modern maternity shapewear offers many of the same advantages as the old-fashioned corsets - and receives many of the same criticisms, too. Never easy answers where fashion is concerned....

The Body: Fashion and Physique continues at the Museum at FIT through May 5, 2018.

Maternity robe, 1860s, printed wool, USA.
Maternity corset, Ferris Bros., c1900, USA.
Both collection of the Museum at FIT. Photograph ©2018 Susan Holloway Scott.

The French Corset in A Duke in Shining Armor

Phillipon, L'utile, marchande de corsets

Loretta reports:

Some time ago, Susan sent me the image you see, of a French corset seller with her wares, as an inspiration for the Dressmakers series I was working on. It looked perfect to me: not only the elegant 1830s corsets but the seller: her hair, her facial expression—that flirtatious glance. I kept it in view, especially when I was writing Leonie’s story, Vixen in Velvet, because she was the corset artiste of the trio.

However, I never wrote about the corset itself. At that time, I was focused on the seller, because my dressmakers were businesswomen.

But its moment came, in a flash of inspiration, when I was working on A Duke in Shining Armor, and had to get my heroine, Olympia, out of her wet clothes and into a fresh set of garments, right down to the underwear.

So far as I had been able to ascertain, ladies’ stays were white, as were all of their undergarments. The examples I’ve seen tend not to be especially sexy—except in the sense of being underwear in the 1800s and therefore sexy to the gentlemen—and not colorful. Maybe a little lace or embroidery would adorn, say, one’s chemise and petticoats, and pretty stitching, as in this example from the V&A online collection.

The undergarments I’d seen had all belonged to respectable women, though, including queens and aristocrats. Ordinary women were more likely to wear their clothes until they were not worth preserving.

Corset ca 1825-35

But what about the not-so-respectable women? What about the courtesans and others who had busy love lives? Expected to dress more dashingly and daringly, they might want to purchase less subdued styles, in colors or at least with colorful trim. This image told me that the Paris corset sellers were well able to oblige them.

As to why Olympia ends up in French underwear, or why she’s wet in the first place—it’s all in the book.

While the above image appears in several places, including my Pinterest board for A Duke in Shining Armor, I recommend you click on this link to the FIT blog and scroll down. You can enlarge it to an enormous size!

Images: L’utile, marchande de Corsets, Charles Phillipon 1830, courtesy Les Musêes de la ville de Paris

White corset, ca 1825-35 courtesy Victoria and Albert Museum online collections.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Friday Video: Dressing an 18thc Lady, Continued: The Busk

Susan reporting,

Last month I shared a video from the Lady Lever Art Gallery and National Museums of Liverpool that demonstrated how an 18thc elite woman was dressed for her day.

Many of you were mystified by one particular wardrobe feature: the busk.

You weren't alone. According to Pauline Loven, the costume historian, costumer, and heritage film producer who created the costumes and contributed the historical background for the first video, the purpose of the busk perplexed many viewers - so much so that this second, shorter video was made to offer further explanation. Both videos were directed by Nick Loven for Crow's Eye Productions.

For examples of several antique busks, see this post from our archives.

Fashions for November 1908

Dresses November 1908

Loretta reports:

Between 1907 and 1908 fashion underwent a major change in terms of silhouette. If you compare this plate to the one posted at left, the difference is obvious. The top-heavy S-curve has smoothed out, and a more vertical look—which may remind you a bit of the Regency style—has taken over.

According to Jane Ashelford’s The Art of Dress,

 “the waistband was raised above its natural level, the skirt was narrowed, and the longer and straighter-fitting corset, introduced in 1908, produced a much smoother and more elongated shape.”

November 1908 dress descriptions

Images courtesy University of Michigan via Hathi Trust.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Update: More About Those 18thc Leather Stays

Isabella reporting,

Last fall I shared a post about the replica leather stays that were being made at Colonial Williamsburg. Following historical examples, the stays were made by leather-workers Jay Howlett and intern Emma Cross for two of CW's apprentices: blacksmith Aislinn Lewis and tinsmith Jenny Lynn. When I wrote more about Jenny's 18thc clothing on Monday, reader Adam Cyphers asked if there was an update on how the leather stays were working "in the field."

The answer is a little mixed. In the pictures above, Aislinn is wearing her stays. As a woman working in a physical trade, she might well have worn the stays like this as an outer garment, and without a bodice or gown over it. Yes, stays were undergarments in the 18thc, but since they were always worn over a linen shift and not against the skin, it wasn't scandalous to wear them like this; it was considered practical.

Jenny's stays weren't as successful, with the original measurements just enough off to make them uncomfortable to wear for a full day's work. Because the stays are cut from single pieces of leather and scored instead of seamed, there isn't a way to adjust or modify them, and the stays are now being used for display in the Margaret Hunter Millinery shop, left. As you can see, however, Jenny did wear the stays long enough for them to begin to assume her shape.

While Jenny waits for another pair, she's wearing a different kind of stays that were popular with working-class women. Hers are stiffened not with whalebone (baleen) strips - used in the more expensive stays of the 18thc - but with thin oak splints that are also used in basketmaking. These stays are Jenny's favorites for everyday, and for now, they're more comfortable, too.

Top: Photographs ©2015 Colonial Williamsburg's blog, Making History.
Below: Photograph ©2016 Susan Holloway Scott.

Leather Stays for 18thc. Working Women

Isabella reporting,

My trips to Colonial Williamsburg usually include a report on some luscious new silk gown for a lady from the mantua-makers (which I promise I will do next week.) But here's something different, for a different kind of 18thc. woman: a replica pair of leather stays (corset) made by another of Colonial Williamsburg's historic trades, the leather-breeches makers.

While more affluent women in the Georgian world wore stays that were an elaborate construction of linen and buckram reinforced with strips of whalebone, women of the laboring classes wore stays made of stiff leather. Not only were leather stays substantially less expensive (they were the stays given to poor women as "charity stays"), but they also were much sturdier, and offered more back support for jobs that required physical exertion. They also gave the fashionable conical silhouette to women couldn't afford the whalebone stays. Like all stays, leather stays were never worn next to the skin, but over a shift, and under the wearer's other clothing.

Saddler and leather-worker Jay Howlett (we have shared his craftsmanship making 18thc.-style leather breeches here and here and replicating one of George Washington's leather field cases here) and intern Emma Cross recently completed new leather stays for two of Colonial Williamsburg's tradeswomen: apprentice blacksmith Aislinn Lewis and apprentice tinsmith Jenny Lynn, lower right. Both had discovered that whalebone stays were insufficient for the kind of manual labor their work involves, with fraying linen and errant whalebone popping through the stitched channels. Leather stays should be the answer, just as they were for their historical predecessors.

Based on 18thc. originals in English and Colonial Williamsburg collections, these stays, above, are in three pieces: two front/back pieces, and a stomacher to fill in the space left by the lacing in the front. The steer leather is insole shoulder, the thick leather used for the soles of shoes. It IS thick, too - see the scrap piece in Jay's hand, right. The pieces were designed to fit the future wearers and drafted as a paper pattern, above left, by tailor and stay-maker Mark Hutter before they were cut from the leather.

The pieces were scored (a shallow cut), lower left, where they needed to bend to accommodate the curves of the body, and eyelet holes were punched in the front and back for the 1/4" linen laces. The top and front edges were finished with a soft goatskin leather binding, both to protect the wearer from chafing, and to add a bit of style. The stomacher was covered with fabric to be make it possible to pin the woman's bodice, worn over the stays, into place. The leather tabs at the bottom flared out over the wearer's hips to help support her petticoats (skirts.)

The stays took Jay and Emma about twelve hours to complete - as opposed to the fifty or more hours required for a pair of whalebone stays. In the 1770s, a pair of leather stays would have cost about eight shillings, while a whalebone pair could have cost anywhere from twelve shillings to several pounds for ones with extra-fine boning and a silk cover.

The leather stays had just been delivered to Aislinn and Jenny, and neither have had a chance to wear them to work yet. Before they can, the stays will require wet-shaping - soaking the leather and wearing them wet until they dry, to help conform to the wearer's shape for a personalized fit. I'm looking forward to hearing the experiences of the two women as they adjust to their new leather stays, and how the stays adjust to them. Updates will be coming!

Further reading: Mark Hutter recommends Stays and Body Image in London: The Staymaking Trade, 1680-1810 by Lynn Sorge-English; the 18thc. stays on which these reproductions are based are described in this book.

Many thanks to Jay Howlett, Emma Cross, and Jenny Lynn for their help with this blog.

Top photo courtesy of Jenny Lynn.
All other photographs ©2015 by Susan Holloway Scott.

Friday Video: Underwear in the V&A: From Corsets to Bullet-Bras and Back

Isabella reporting,

Corsets, stays, and underwear in general are always popular topics here on the blog, and the use of corseting to achieve a fashionable body shape is once again back in the news under the guise of "waist-training". In this video, Eleri Lynn, fashion curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, shares some of the highlights of the collection as well as her thoughts on the ever-changing ways that undergarments have been used to enhance, modify, and support the female body.

Ms. Lynn is also the author of one of my favorite books on historical underpinnings, Underwear: Fashion in Detail. The latest in the gorgeous series of fashion histories featuring the V&A's collections, this over-sized book is filled with page after page of beautiful images and stunning details. You'll find almost everything here, from a 16thc. boy's shirt to 18thc. stays to a 19thc. whalebone busk, Queen Victoria's bloomers to Calvin Klein's briefs. Highly recommended!

Friday Video: How to Sit in an 1860s Hoop Skirt

Isabella reporting,

Whenever we share a image of a mid-19th c. lady in a hoopskirt or crinoline (like these fashionable ladies from 1860, below), we're invariably asked how those ladies sat in what amounts to an oversized wire lampshade tied around the waist.

So once again we turned to one of the friends of our blog, historical seamstress and re-enactor Jennifer Rosbrugh, for the answer. (Previously Jennifer showed us how to sit in a bustle.) Jennifer recently posted this video on her own blog, and we felt it was well worth sharing. And yes, if you possess a hoop skirt, please try this at home!

Right: "Dressed for a Party", Godey's Lady's Book, September, 1860.


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Victorian Corsets: Some Facts & Myths—update

Loretta reports:

I had the good fortune recently to attend a lecture by historic fashion and textile expert Astrida Schaeffer at the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, MA.  Ms. Schaeffer very kindly gave me permission to take photographs of her lecture.*

As this blog’s regular readers are aware, we periodically point out fashion myths, especially those about corsets.**  However, my research area is the early part of the 19th century, not the Victorian era, so I was interested to distinguish truth from myth regarding later corsets, constructed with materials like steel and metal grommets strong enough to allow more intense tightening.

The changes were not as extreme as we tend to think.  No, the 16”-18” waist wasn’t the norm but the exception.  Ms. Schaeffer presented several images showing the waist we associate with Victorian women, and pointed out that these were not usual, but corset ads or images of actresses whose claim to fame was a teeny tiny waist.  The average woman didn’t go to this extreme.  Her corset was meant to create a smooth line under her clothing, and she came in all shapes and sizes as women do today.

Waist differences illustration source

Ms. Schaeffer also pointed out the way the corset redistributed flesh.  From the front, the waist appears narrow, especially with a great skirt ballooning out below.  But if we look at the lady from the side, she’s rather wider.  The experiment was tried with an actual human being, and the picture shows what happened.


These images, front and side, give you an idea.

 

Another false image is the Victorian woman lying or swooning on her sofa  because her corset prevents activity.  Also not true.  I couldn’t keep up with all the photographic examples, but here’s just one, of women jumping rope.  In other photos from The Happy Valley, they’re climbing fences and jumping down from them, ice skating and roller skating, running, leaping fearlessly from stairs, and so on.  As we’ve pointed out before, when you live in a world where the corset is the norm and not wearing one is abnormal, you are simply accustomed to doing everything wearing a corset.  It doesn’t debilitate you.  If you’re in the last stages of a galloping consumption, that’s another story entirely.

If all goes smoothly, I’ll have something to say at another time soon about Ms. Schaeffer’s book, Embellishments: Constructing Victorian Detail.

The gold dress, c. 1896, which belonged to Ellen Rodman Motley, is part of the museum’s extensive collection of clothing.  A small but fine selection is on view at present.

Update:  Belated credit to The Pragmatic Costumer, whose illustration above, of the waist differences was included in the lecture, but whose source I was unaware of.  Please check out her post, which is much more informative than I could ever be.

*Not wishing to be obnoxious about it, I limited photo-taking to one or two examples in each  subject she covered.
**Please click on the corsets label for more on the topic.

A Wisp of a Bandeau Bra, c. 1920

Isabella reporting,

Fashion thrives on change, and one of the most dramatic shifts came with the end of the 19th c. and the second decade of the 20th. The red silk corset from 1889 that I featured earlier this week and this bandeau bra, left, from the 1920s are both from the exhibition Exposed: A History of Lingerie, now showing at the Museum at FIT, and I can't imagine two other pieces of clothing that would make the change more vivid.

The corset belongs to the 1890s, an era that prized an hourglass figure, accentuated by whalebone, bustles, and lots of tailoring and drapery. The 1920s ushered in a boyish silhouette with a minimum of feminine curves. As the placard on the bandeau bra explains:

"Bras of the 1920s bore little resemblance to the bust supporters introduced during the late nineteenth century. In correspondence to the increasingly slender body type of the fashionable woman, most bras were designed to flatten and de-emphasize the bosom. Although the styles varied widely, the bandeau bra was the most modern in its simplicity."

This change happened in the course of only thirty years, a not unrealistic span in a woman's fashion-lifetime. Imagine the response of a woman who had worn the red corset under clothes like these, right, as a twenty-year-old newlywed, confronted in her fifties with a stylish granddaughter who'd adopted the latest flapper-inspired styles, lower left.

The same dismay must have been felt by 18th c. women who'd worn stays all their lives and were abruptly faced with the minimal support and gossamer muslin gowns of the early 19th c. Another generation of women who likely felt similarly betrayed would have been those who'd been proud of their curvaceous, bombshell figures in the 1950s – until Mary Quant's Youthquake appeared in the 1960s, and Twiggy replaced Jayne Mansfield as the fashionable ideal.

All of which supports one of my personal theories about fashion: To be a fashionable beauty, you have to get lucky, and be born into the right time period for what Nature gave you.

Above left: Bandeau bra, silk and lace, 1920s. Museum at FIT.
Right: "Dress for a New Year's Reception, Modes Parisiennes", Peterson's Magazine, January, 1890.
Lower left: "Evening at the Casino," fashion plate from Art-Goût-Beaut magazine, Paris, 1920s.

A "Healthy" Corset in Red Silk, 1889

Isabella reporting,

One of my favorite galleries in New York City is the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). Drawing from the museum's own extensive collections, their exhibitions always offer thoughtful and fascinating perspectives on fashion, and their latest show, Exposed: A History of Lingerie is no exception. From stays to bustles, 20s camiknicker to 80s thongs - the secrets of Western women's most private attire and underwear drawer are all on display.

This small (it measures only 33"-22"-32") red silk corset, created by the Warner Brothers Company of Bridgeport, CT, in 1889, intrigued me because it was advertised by its creators as a "healthy" style. Here's an excerpt from the exhibition label:

"Although this vibrant corset is especially alluring, it was likely marketed as a 'healthy' style. Its curvaceous silhouette was achieved using coraline, a plant-basted material marketed as a more flexible alternative to whalebone or steel."

Intrigued, I did a bit of research. A Warner Brothers company sales piece does in fact tout the healthy benefits of their corsets, especially in comparison to that great villain, whalebone:

"Coraline...is more pliable and yielding to the movements of the body. The object of stiffness in a corset is not to convert the form into a rigid statue, to paralyze the action of the heart and lungs, to destroy a woman's comfort and to ruin her health...All the benefit a corset can give is to afford just that degree of rigidity to the waist and chest which shall give graceful curves to the contour of the body, and enable the dress to fit smoothly...[with] the ease, comfort, elasticity and grace of action which come from wearing a Coraline Corset...[in place of] her former instrument of torture."

Hmm, that sounds suspiciously similar to the modern sales pitch for Spanx.

But wait - there's more! A lady could purchase this corset comforted by the fact that De Ver Warner & Lucien C. Warner were "regularly educated physicians" who had seen first-hand the "effects of badly fitting corsets upon the health of women." The brothers had made it their personal mission "to extend the blessing of properly fitting corsets to the entire community," even "giving up a large and lucrative practice" to do so.

The altruism of these good doctors knew no bounds. Not only was their factory a model building in which to work, with "all the rooms heated by steam, and abundantly supplied with light and air," but the majority of their workers were women. And such women, too:

"They are mostly New England girls, and very many of them know how to teach school as well as to stitch a corset. We find it is only by employing intelligent help that we can secure the superior quality of work which we demand."

Really, how could you not buy one of their corsets?

If you'd like to read more, the entire sales piece is online here. If you'd like to read how the Warner Brothers Corset Company eventually evolved into the giant textile and clothing corporation known as The Warnaco Group, here's a link to a short history of the company.

Better still, visit the Museum at FIT yourself.  Exposed runs through November 15, 2014. If you can't get to New York, highlights of the exhibition are online here. Even better will be a lavish companion book to the exhibition by Colleen Hill, with an introduction by Valerie Steele, to be published by Yale University Press in September. See here for more information about the book, which is already on my wish-list.

Above: Warner Bros. Corset, red silk satin & coraline, 1889. Photograph courtesy of Museum at FIT.

Perfect corsets for the 1830s

Corset fitting

Loretta reports:

The perfect corset plays an important part in the subplot of my latest Dressmaker book, Vixen in Velvet, and I don’t doubt that women then went through the same trials and tribulations of finding the Perfect Stays  as many women today endure, in search of the Perfect Bra. 

As we’ve pointed out before, stays change quite a bit over time, and those of the 1830s are very different from what was worn earlier in the century, and nothing like the ones Isabella’s 18th century characters wear or those she’s shown from Colonial Williamsburg (here and here and elsewhere).

However, no matter what the time period, one finds advertisements extolling the virtues of a particular “special design.”

Here are two samples from the 1830s.

1833 corset ad here

1835 corset ad here

Illustration courtesy Wikipedia. Note that the image is from a 1905 book, but the illustration, by Achille Deveria, shows 1830s styles, and the original is most likely from that time period.

Return Engagement: More about Corsets and Baleen

Isabella reporting,

Whenever the word "corset" is mentioned in a historical context, it's almost always described as being "whalebone." Yet this is something of a misnomer: corsets – or stays, as 18th c. corsets were called – weren't stiffened with whalebone, but with another part of the whale called baleen.

Baleen is the feathery, comb-like feature in the mouths of whales, screening and trapping food as they swim through the water. Baleen is made of keratin, a flexible material that's more akin to cartilage and fingernails than bone. But in the past, the definition - and the whale's anatomy - was blurred, and baleen and whalebone were used interchangeably. Baleen was harvested by whalers, and sold in strips such as those above left, on display in the milliner's shop in Colonial Williamsburg.

As a material, baleen is strong and stiff but yielding, and can be cut, filed, and shaped. Many things that are today fashioned from plastic were made from baleen in the 18th c., including eyeglass frames, the spokes of umbrellas and parasols, and the blades of folding fans.

And stays. As soon as fitted, stiffened corsets

became the fashion in 16th c. France and Italy, baleen was the stylish choice for the boning, or stays - the long, narrow pieces that were forced into the corset's vertical channels, and gave the garment its name. Baleen didn't crack like reeds or wood splints (other popular and less expensive options.) Baleen was strong and pliable, and it could be split to make the very thin stays that were necessary for sophisticated shaping.

Stylish 18th c. stays were a work of art, or at least a work of very high craftsmanship and engineering. Here are a few examples: from the Boston Musem of Fine Arts, the MMA's Costume Institute, and the Victoria & Albert.

There could be dozens of baleen pieces in a single pair of stays, each carefully cut, tailored, and finished to size. Nearly all stay makers were men, simply because few women possessed the hand strength necessary to force the baleen into the narrow channels. Of course, this also led to lots of salacious prints from the era, such as this one, lower right, with the leering corset maker fitting the young woman while another gentleman watches. Why do I doubt it's her husband?

But by the middle of 19th c., steel boning began to replace baleen in corsets. Steel was equally flexible, but far easier to manufacture and use, and considerably less expensive than baleen. Just as the development of oil drilling and the petroleum industry in the 1850s spelled the end of the whale oil market, so, too, did metal corset stays do the same for baleen.

Fortunately for whales, the days of Captain Ahab are as long gone as corsets. Today the harvesting of baleen and all other by-products of American whale fishing is strictly regulated by the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, and profits from the sale of baleen are limited to Alaskan Aleuts, Indians, and Eskimos (which is the source of the baleen used at Colonial Williamsburg.)

For more information (and lots of photographs) about the sociology as well as the history of corsets, I recommend The Corset: A Cultural History by Valerie Steele.

Casual Friday: Dressing for the Easter Ball 1819

Loretta reports:

Whether you plan to show off your Easter finery in a parade or at a ball, or simply wait patiently for a chance to wear some spring clothes (we're still bundled up here in New England and the daffodils are shivering), I hope this image will amuse.



Dandies and Dandizettes dressing for the Easter Ball
Published by Thomas Tegg, 1819

Thanks to Isabella for bringing it to my attention, and to the Rijksmuseum for making it available through the Rijksstudio.

Friday Video: New Look Underwear, 1948

NEW LOOK UNDERWEAR

Isabella reporting,

Sitting safely in the relaxed twenty-first century, most of us tend to think of women wearing corsets as a fashion from at least a hundred years ago.

But in 1947, shortly after World War II, French designer Christian Dior launched his New Look, right, which was really an old look with new marketing. Instead of the slender, economical lines that had been in favor for the previous twenty years or so, Dior launched fashions that put an end to post-war austerity. His New Look dresses and suits features full, sweeping skirts, tiny waists, and sculptured shoulders.

Old-look bodies required some help to achieve the New Look style. As this short clip from an English newsreel shows, stylish women once again turned to heavy-duty, tight-laced corsets, plus a bit of judicious pinned-on padding, to achieve the hourglass silhouette.

Newsreel footage copyright British Pathe, 1947.

If you receive this post via email and are seeing only a black box or empty space, please go to the blog at www.twonerdyhistorygirls.com to view the video.

A Modest Lady's Undergarments 1811

Ball Dress 1811

Loretta reports:

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[T]hough the hoop and quilted petticoat are no longer suffered to shroud in hideous obscurity one of the loveliest works in nature, yet all intermediate covering is not to be banished.  . . .
 
Some of our fair dames appear, summer and winter, with no other shelter from sun or frost, than one single garment of muslin or silk over their chemise—if they wear one !  . . . No eye but that of a libertine can look upon so wanton a figure with any other sensations than those of disgust and contempt: and the end of all her arts being lost, the certainty of an early old age, chronic pains and deeply-furrowed wrinkles, is thus incurred in vain.
 
No woman . . . ought to be prodigal of her charms ; she should not " unmask her beauties to the moon or unduely expose the vital fluid, which animates her frame with life and joy. A momentary blast from the east may pierce her filmy robes, wither her bloom, and lay her low for ever.
 

ca 1815 corset, CW

The Chemise, (now too frequently banished,) ought to be held as sacred by the modest fair, as the vestal veil . . . to shelter her from the gaze of unhallowed eyes. There are circumstances which might occur to her, wherein the want of this decent garment might subject her to a shame never to be forgotten by herself or others. Let her think of accidents " by flood, or field, or fire;" and I trust she will never again subject herself to the chance of such unwomanly exposure...
 
[W]e shall next speak of the stays, or corsets. They must be light and flexible, yielding to the shape, while they support it. In warm weather, my fair reader should wear under her gown and slip, a light cotton petticoat; these few habiliments are sufficient to impart the softening line of modesty to the defined outline of the form. Health, also, is preserved by their opposing the immediate influence of the atmosphere; and none will deny, that enough of female charms are thus displayed, to gratify the quick, discerning eye of taste.
—The Mirror of the Graces,1811

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Guidance on shoes and stockings here. Proper behavior between the sexes here.

A Silk Dress for 1880

Loretta reports:

While late Victorian fashion is definitely unfamiliar territory for me, I’m drawn to its silhouette and complex construction—as in this 1880 dress.  Part of the Strawbery Banke Museum exhibition, Thread: Stories of Fashion at Strawbery Banke, 1740-2012,* it appears in a house interpreted for the time period.  I wasn’t able to get a profile photograph, but it's safe to assume a bustle was in use.

A farmer’s daughter married in June 1880 to the Assistant Post Master of Portsmouth wore this on the day after the wedding.  “Her complicated ensemble is made from silk, including a removable gathered train.”

The 1880 day ensembles in my 80 Godey’s full-Color Fashion Plates 1828-1880 show a tightly encased upper body and hips.  Jackets fasten snugly from hips up to neck, and the neckline is high, with either a mandarin style collar like this one or ruffles above a fold-over collar. 

While trying to learn about this fashion development, I came upon an interesting comment regarding the tiny waists of the 19th century.  The author of Victorian and Edwardian Fashion quotes Doris Langley Moore’s The Woman in Fashion:  “‘A distinction should be made between actual and corset measurements, because stays, as ordinarily worn, do not meet at the back.  Young girls, especially, derive intense satisfaction from proclaiming the diminutive size of their corset.  Many purchase 18 and 19 inch stays, who must leave them open 2, 3, and 4 inches.’”  Moore is quoted again in Valerie Steele’s** more recent The Corset: A Cultural History, which adds:  “‘Fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen inch waists are glibly chattered about, as though they were common enough . . . [yet] we question whether it is a physical possibility for women to reduce their natural waist measure below seventeen or eighteen inches.’”  Ms. Steele notes that a Guiness Book of Records winner proved it’s physically possible—but it’s not necessarily common, except among fetishists.  Since I can’t do justice to the topic in a short post, interested Nerdy History Persons might want to peruse Chapter 4 of Ms. Steele’s book.

*Previous posts are here, here, and here.
**Late-breaking news:  Ms Steele will be speaking at the Designers and Books Fair at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC on 27 October.