What do you think of when you hear the word ‘corset’?  Vivienne Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind – clinging to the bedpost while she’s laced firmly into her underwear?  Whalebone and lots of tight lacing?  Madonna in concert?  You may be surprised to learn that Corsets were worn by ancient civilizations.  Women have endured, loved and hated them for thousands of years.

Why ‘corsets’?

The word comes from ‘corps’ (pronounced cor) the French word for body.

What is a corset?

It’s a piece of underwear and sometimes outerwear that fits over the middle of the body and when tightened, makes the waist smaller.  Some also have the effect of pushing the breasts up and together, or flattening them, depending on the historical period.

Earliest known corsets…

At a Neolithic archaeological site in Norfolk, England, drawings on cave walls show women wearing corsets.  They are laced down the front and appear to be made from animal skins.  Historians think that these were wrapped around the body when freshly killed so that they would shrink and mould to the woman’s shape as they dried.  Even cavewomen suffered for fashion!  In the same cave, dolls made from stone were discovered.  The dolls wore corsets tied on with bird sinews.

Ancient Civilizations

Paintings on the walls of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete from around 1700 BC tell us that the Minoans at wore lace-up corsets.  Young boys wore them to train their stomach muscles and women either wore ‘full’ corsets or ‘corselettes’ (half or small corsets) that flattened their stomachs and lifted their exposed breasts.

Painted pottery from around the same time reveals corseted women in Egypt, Rome and Assyria.  Some corsets were worn to enhance athletic performance.  Hieroglyphics show Greek females wearing a deep band under their breasts to lift them and to flatten their stomachs.  In Rome, high born folk wore loose fitting garments and their showed their domination over slaves by forcing them into tightly laced corset.

Corsets in the Bible

Isaiah Chapter 3 speaks against the wearing of ‘girdles’ and ‘a stomacher of sackcloth’.  Many early Christians ignored this and bound rope so tightly around their waists that if often rubbed away the skin.  At that time, Constantinople was the fashion capital and chic women there wore a wide belt covered in jewels that cinched in their waists.

13^th and 14^th Century (1200 – 1300)

Loose dresses were gradually overtaken by the fashion for a more fitted style which was then tied around the body with to further emphasize a lady’s shape.  These dresses were called ‘kirtles’.  In ‘Canterbury Tales’, Chaucer noted that kirtles came in many colors and fitted tightly to the female body.

This style was replaced by a fitted dress with a flat front panel containing laces which could be pulled tight.  This form of lacing was first used in Italy and was called a coche.  When it reached England, it was known as a busk.  The earliest busk that still survives was made of iron in around 1556. The ‘corset’ effect was further enhanced due to huge growth in the silk industry.  Firmer fabrics like brocade and velvet were used for dressmaking and when dresses began to be made with firmer fabrics. 

Surcoats also became fashionable at this time.  This was a form-hugging overcoat that King Charles the Fifth of France thought was pornographic.  He declared if anyone wore one, he would excommunicate them.  This meant being thrown out of the Church and your soul damned through all eternity.

16^th Century (1500’s)

Clothes were used to show a person’s social standing.  They also signified someone’s power and money.  The Italian Catherine de Medici married a French King and she ruled that her servants should corset their waists to no more than 13 inches.  That must have hurt!

Corsets from this court still exist today.  They were made of four steel plates with elaborate cutout designs.  The sides and front panel were hinged and the back was left open so that they could be put on.  No one is sure if they were worn routinely or were for medical reasons.  It is thought that they may have been for show, like the armor worn by Knights, which was often more for display than practicality.

During this century, the concept of skirts and tops developed.  This allowed for a much more closely fitted ‘top’ to be worn.  To give the woman a good shape, under-bodices were made from fabric (usually linen) that had been stiffened with a paste and left to dry.  They were further supported by busks made from wood, which were called ‘corps’ – the first sign of the word ‘corset’.  It then became fashionable for a woman’s shape to change even more and to achieve this, the corps was made longer with the addition of a length of fabric known as a basque.  This could be changed with padding to make a woman’s hips larger – a sign of beauty.  Women loved these under-bodices so much that outer garments were modified to show them off.

17^th Century (1600’s)

Around this time, the busk enjoyed a resurgence.  They were now made from carved wood, ivory or whalebone or metal.  The busk sat inside the front panel of a corset and relied on different lacings.  Women flirted by giving their busk lacings to a man they desired.  On a more sinister note, busks were also made into daggers and used against unwanted attention.  Fabrics were now highly expensive and so the basque was no longer worn.

18^th Century (1700’s)

Whalebone corsets were highly sought after for a while.  These were long and worn over an under blouse but were highly restrictive and uncomfortable.  For the first time, medical professionals became worried about the effect they were having.  It wasn’t unusual for a woman to wear corsets night and day to attain a wasp waist.  The waist diameter was decreased over the weeks until many women had a 15 or 16 inch waist. 

During Napoleon’s time, cotton became highly fashionable and the Empire and Regency style of dress was in.  It lent itself to softer designs and so corsets became less popular although women still used simple binders to accentuate their curves.

19^th Century (1800’s)

During the Napoleonic Wars, a French Army Doctor invented an eyelet made from metal which was immediately put to use in corset design.  These protected the fabric – allowing for the corset to be pulled even tighter.  The goal was for a man’s fingers to touch when he put his hands around a woman’s waist.  However, the eyelets weren’t a success for long.  A corset called a ‘minet back’ took over.  At the back, it had loops all down each side and was closed by a bar made from whalebone which was threaded through the loops.

Hoops and crinolines were worn to enhance a lady’s cinched waist but these fell by the wayside when bustles came in.  This was a padded attachment to the corset, which gave the woman an exaggerated behind.

Design and manufacture were both taking off and at the same time, ladies became more active.  As a result, a variety of corset flooded onto the market.  Wealthy women wore a light corset in the morning, a corset without bones for beach wear, an elasticized corset for riding horses and a corset of jersey fabric for riding bicycles.

By the late 1880’s, stockings were newly available.  These were kept in place by suspenders on lengths of ribbon or fabric stitched to the corset.

Whalebone was now so difficult to get and so expensive that umbrellas were dismantled to provide it.

More to come in part 3 – The 20th Century……..