Sempstress

Yet another dry, dusty pile of academic writing… This time, the topic is the corsetry/torso support of the 16th century.  I find the full history of the artificial silhouette totally fascinating, and I’m geeked beyond belief on the actual genesis of the corset.  In the 16th century alone, a bunch of different devices are in play.  Corsets, obviously – who doesn’t know about the Pfaltzgrafin and Effigy corsets by now?  Wardrobe warrants also list stomachers (for Tudor gowns) made of pasteboard covered with tapheta – that’s certainly stiff enough to smooth the front of the torso into the signature tudor inverted, featureless cone.  By the end of the period, warrants talk about busks made of whalebone and wire, quilted with sarconet.  (How does that fit into a channel in a corset?!?  Or does the end of the era, with it’s open-fronted gowns, turn back to the same infrastructure used by the earlier tudor gowns with stiffened stomachers?  I have my theories, obviously….)

So here is…. Everything I know About 16th Century Corsetry, Read the rest of this entry »

This is an excerpt from a research paper I did a while back. The paper itself is 40 pages and covers 4 centuries of support skirts and corsetry. I figure it’s more digestible in smaller chunks. Please note: my regularly scheduled writing style has been suspended in favor of something more palatable to the hardcore academia types. Special thanks go to Stephanie for her proof-reading skills.

And now for Everything I Know About 16th Century Support Skirts… Read the rest of this entry »

File this one under “possibly useful to some one, at some time, somehow”: this is a series of pictures of corsets I’ve made over the last several years. Each one shows me standing in profile, next to my dress dummy. This makes the changes in my shape imposed by each corset fairly obvious, and the pictures all together give you a pretty good idea what different types of boning and styles of corset can do for a girl. Read the rest of this entry »