The Tight History Of Corsets
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By :
Phoenix Delray
Submitted
2008-12-01 23:29:20 |
Corsets have been a part of the female wardrobe for hundreds of years, and are seemingly making a comeback in the way of their popularity. Corsets originally were simple pieces with tabs at the waist that were stiffened by buckram and whalebone. In the 16th century, corsets were laced from the back, and was initially only for the wealthiest and most well to do aristocrats. The shape and form of the corset changed in the 18th century, and the stays in the back reached all the way up to the neck. In the 18th century, the purpose was to emphasize the bust.
While this was the style for many original corsets, other corsets were soft, quilted linen, laced in the front, with little or no support. These corsets were meant for informal wear. In the late 1700s, men actually began to wear corsets! The men who wore corsets through those years through the 1850s would claim to need them for back pain. Corsets in the early 19th century lengthened the hips and the stays in the back were lowered. In the 1820s the waist waistline was lowered almost to the natural position. It was during this time that corsets started to be worn by all classes of society.
Throughout most of the history of corsets, the color has been predominantly white. The corsets during the time of the Civil War were shorter than the ones of the four previous decades, mainly to emphasize the hoopskirts. Once hoopskirts fell out of fashion, corsets once again became longer to mold the abdomen and hips. Corsets reached their longest lengths in the beginning of the 20th century, and were referred to as longline corsets. At first, they reached from the bust all the way down to the upper thigh. The corsets evolved into a style that is much closer than the modern girdle than the corsets before this time, however, the longline corsets were deserted during World War I.
Even though corsets had fallen out of fashion in Europe and the United States in the 1920s, today they are used mostly for sexual fetishes, costumes, goth subcultures, and for BDSM. For the most part, though, corsets have been replaced by girdles and other forms of underwear and undergarments of all kinds that are designed to suck in the waist.
Since the 1980s there have been a few periodic revivals of corsets that have run through the fashion world. The fashion trends however have mostly focused on corsets as articles of outerwear rather than undergarments. Autumn of 2001 saw the biggest revival of corsets since the 1940s and 1950s when the hourglass figure became back in high demand. |
Author Resource:-
For more information on corsets, please visit our website.
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