On the Corset and the Crinoline

from Costume: Fanciful, Historical and Theatrical by Mrs. Aria, 1906.

"The most faithful and punctilious archaeologists confess that the origin of the corset must be written down to the credit or discredit of man, for they find the birth of its existence may be dated in the far antiquity, when the savage made his hunting belt of leather stiffened with, bone or hard stick held with a thong of hide, and as decorative as useful, since it was adorned with shells and quills and served to hold the knife or quiver.

Ovid recommends the fair ones of his day to wear those ingenious constructions which give lines to the bust and all it lacks, while Homer describes Juno as wearing a ceinture ornamented with a thousand fringes, and we are, of course, convinced of the fact that she borrowed from Venus a famous cestus wherein were all the pains and penalties of love.

The ancient Greeks and Romans sternly opposed the corset, and yet they yielded to the necessity for bands and belts to support the bust, this band being usually made of embroidered leather. There is indisputable proof that in the earliest days of civilisation there was in use a variety of contrivances for the reduction of the feminine figure, and in a most interesting chronicle I read that “Amongst the works of art discovered amongst the ruins of one of the mysterious forest cities in South America is a bas–relief representing a female figure which, in addition to a profusion of massive ornaments, wears a complicated and elaborate waist bandage, which by a system of circular and transverse folding and looping confines the waist just below the ribs to the hips.” What could be more conclusive ? Here is obviously the ancestress of the straight-fronted Spécialité corset.

The origin of the word “stays” comes from stay, to support; the term “corset” may have been developed from “corps”: the term “corse,” however, must not be confounded with it, and Planche considers this should apply merely to the bodice of a gown. The earliest method of making the stay was with pieces of cane, and this may be compared favourably with a variety obtaining as lately as in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This was made of steel with broad pieces of steel shaped to the hips, and clamped or hinged under each arm, being straightly stiff at the top of the front and the back, where it reached up to the shoulder–blades. These frames, however, were not primarily used to reduce the waist, for they were worn over a corset, so that the dress might yield not to the weakness of a single fold, and that the stomacher might present a front of unruffled smoothness. A development of this stay showed it curved at the top, front, and back, somewhat in the outline of those we wear now, but clamped together down the back, and made of the stiffest of iron, and decorated with countless meaningless–looking little holes and apertures. This was the style adopted by Catherine of Medici, which permitted her the questionable joy of reducing her waist to thirteen inches.

Christine of France, we are told by Jacob the bibliophilist, wore a “justaucorps” embroidered in gold and studded with precious stones; this was a remarkable shape, not defining the waist at all, and finished off with an indented basque.

The first mention of what may rightly be termed the corset is at the end of the fourteenth century, when the dresses cut low in the front introduced by Isabella of Bavaria were responsible for the innovation, and made popular the wearing of the new garment, which was made in all kinds of materials laced either at the front or at the back.

At the end of the fifteenth century the basquine was adopted, a corset of stout linen or cotton with a busk of wood or metal at the front. Rabelais says, “The ladies at the Court of Francis I wore basquines, and a silk camlet over their chemises,” and it is needless to say that they incurred the displeasure of the preachers of the day; indeed Charles IX and Henry III issued several stringent laws with regard to the corset, being convinced that it was highly injurious to the health of its wearers, and the corps piqué which was worn in this reign was neither more nor less than an instrument of torture, compressing the body into a hard unyielding mould, the splinters of wood often tearing the skin. Until the end of the sixteenth century the tailor had the monopoly of corset–making, and his methods seem to have been anything but tender. It was in the seventeenth century that Ben Jonson pathetically complained

The whalebone man,

Who quilts the bodies I have leave to span.

In the reign of Louis XV corsets were cut away on the hips and laced at the back, the long busks of wood or steel being only in the front; whalebone was used to stiffen the corset, which was sometimes made in two pieces and laced under the arms, and it was invariably supplied with shoulder–straps, and began in those days to take unto itself such rich materials as brocade and satin embroidered in gold chenille or silk. The Directoire period produced a classic zone worn outside the dress, a mode that soon gave place to the boneless corset, a fleeting fancy, for all costume worn in the time of Louis XVI owes its greatest charm to the stays, the bodices being cut into long points and fitted tightly from bust to waist. In some instances these bodices were sewn on to the figure of the wearer after the stays had been laced to their extreme limit, and many of Hogarth’s figures prove the influence of the very stiff stay, the figures being erect in an uncomfortable degree, for it is impossible to imagine any human creature achieving such excellence of carriage without considerable support from without, and some inconvenience from within.

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A thirteenth century girdle.

A corset from the "Empire" or Regency era.