This book shows how body wraps, stays, and corsets were worn to create a variety of fashionable silhouettes through past centuries. Corsets flattened breasts and accentuated rounded hips or pushed up breasts and showed off the bust line depending on the fashions of the time and the desired silhouette. Overview of corsets through history, including the Georgian, Regency, Victorian and Edwardian Eras, and the Bridgerton and Jane Austen’ years. History Notes Book 14.
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The name stays probably comes from the French estayer meaning to support. The word corset, which comes from the French word corps for body, had been in use centuries earlier, though often with not quite the same meaning. By the beginning of the 19th century when these undergarments took on more shape and form, the word corset was generally used instead of stays.
During the 1820s, fashions changed from the loose and flowing Regency Era or Empire style gowns and the waistline lowered back to almost the natural position. Towards the mid 1800s, breast cups were added to corsets to give more support and breast comfort. Corsets were lengthened to the hip and gussets added in both the bust area and over the hips. Therefore corsets had more shaping but with less boning.
From the 1820s onwards, menbegan to wear corsets and this continued through the Romantic Era, though the men who wore corsets usually claimed they needed them for back pain.
Queen Victoria ruled England from 1837 to 1901 and at the beginning of her reign, dress waists were around their natural line. But as the years of her reign progressed, fashionable waists became thinner and corsets were redesigned to give more of an hourglass figure.
Early Victorian Era corsets were cotton, boned with mainly whale bone, laced at the back and with tiny hooks and eyes up the front for front fastening. By the middle of the century, corsets were beginning to be more decorative with embroidery and ribbons and then later made of colorful silks and satins.
