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The hourglass became the iconic corset shape. They are featured in the media; often the image of the corset shown is of a "woman clutching a bedpost while their maid pulls and pulls at the corset strings". [2] The hourglass corset accentuated slim waists and broadened the bust, shoulders and hips.
The earliest corsets had a wooden busk placed down the center fronts of the corsets; these early busks were different from the more modern steel busks which have clasps to facilitate opening and closing the corset from the front. Corsets of the 17th and 18th centuries were most often heavily boned, with little or no space between the bone channels.
Many doctors helped to fit their patients with corsets to avoid the dangers of ill-fitting corsets, and some doctors even designed corsets themselves. Roxey Ann Caplin became a widely renowned corset maker, enlisting the help of her husband, a physician, to create corsets which she purported to be more respectful of human anatomy. [ 2 ]
Obstetricians of this period connected lifelong corset-wearing to the difficult births that many Victorian women experienced. [15] In particular, the use of corsets during pregnancy was widely condemned, with physician Alice Bunker Stockham writing sardonically: "The corset should not be worn for two hundred years before pregnancy takes place."
Victorian corsets also had a buttoned or hooked front opening called a busk. If the corset was worn loosely, it was possible to leave the lacing as adjusted and take the corset on and off using the front opening. (If the corset is worn snugly, this method will damage the busk if the lacing is not significantly loosened beforehand).
Corset from 1873. The spoon busk is covered in fabric but shown shaded pink, for clarity. The spoon busk was a specialised kind of busk—the rigid element of a corset placed at the centre front. As its name implies, it was shaped like a spoon, with the bottom part of the busk widening and taking a dished form.
Front Claps for corsets. A busk (also spelled busque) is a rigid element of a corset at the centre front of the garment. [1] Two types exist, one- and two-part busks. [2]Single-piece busks were used in "stays" and bodices from the sixteenth to early nineteenth centuries and were intended to keep the front of the corset or bodice straight and upright.
The Royal Worcester Corset Company, was founded as The Worcester Skirt Company by David Hale Fanning in 1861 in Worcester, MA, and first specialized in making hoop skirts. [1] In 1872 the company changed its name to the Worcester Corset Co., to reflect its change of direction from hoop skirts to torso shaping.