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Corset Building - A General Overview

Corsets have been worn by both men and women for hundreds of years. Shapes and construction techniques have varied and so have the materials used. In order to reproduce the correct shapes you need to have an understanding of the materials available to you on today’s market.

This article will focus more on the bones/steels or stays than the fabric. I have written this a general guide, not as an historic text.

The earlier corsets tend to be those with the least amount of shape or curves. The breasts tend to be flattened and their shape diminished. (see illustrations below) To attain this straight silhouette you are having to "fight" the natural curves of most women’s bodies. Success depends on two things strength of boning used and tightness of lacing. For the sake of comfort you can only lace so tightly, it is therefore more practical to use the proper quality of "bone". The best product on today’s market is "Spring Steel". Corsets/bodices of this time were made of linen.

Spring steel boning is nylon-coated steel that is white in colour and comes in different widths, thickness and length. When choosing a spring steel for this type of corset the "thickness" is more important than the width and nothing less than .6mm should be considered unless the woman involved has very little curve. Spring steel of this thickness is somewhat flexible but is quite difficult to bend. See our item 50-8206- sold by the piece in pre finished lengths from 10cm – 42cm and also sold by the metre; item #50-8406-06

By the early 19th(1800’s) Century women were attempting to enhance their bustline and hips and corsets were less heavily boned and more accommodating to the body. While less boning was used there was still a centre front bone or busk (of the non-opening type) It was wider than previous bones and was important to the corset for pushing the breasts upward. Item #50-8515-30 is useful for this purpose. Opening busks came later.

As the latter part of the 19th century arrived the corset became more curvaceous. Corsets supposedly became more comfortable and allowed more freedom of movement. Spiral bones and the lighter spring steels (item #50-8308- ) can best recreate these shapes. Spiral bones flex in any direction and are capable of supporting most any curve a corset may have. The lighter spring steels are more flexible than the heavier but can still only flex back and forth not side to side, which limits their use in curved seams. They are however important in centre front and particularly in centre back as support for the lacing. By this time coutil was the fabric of choice.

Busks, we touched briefly on the straight busk above. There are also busks which open and are used in the front of corsets to enable you to get into and out of your corset without help. These did not appear until around 1860 and began with the straight busk , the spoon busk appeared shortly afterward in about 1870. Both items can be found in our catalogue.

For more information on the construction of corsets through out time consider reading "Waisted Efforts" by Robert Doyle, copies can be purchased from us, see our "book" section.

SEE ALSO OUR CORSET PATTERN AND KITS

Illustrations below are from the book "Waisted Efforts"
16th Century Corset 17th Century Corset 18th Century Corset 19th Century Corset
16th Century 17th Century 18th Century 19th Century

A Comparison of Historic and Contemporary Corsets

Thanks to Robert Doyle author of "Waisted Efforts" I have had the opportunity to view and handle a few corsets from his collection of period pieces. Most of them are found in his book and I had the privilege of photographing two to display here. I hope the details will be visible.

I chose the two corsets in the photo below because the pattern must have been very similar and both were black with white lining. I made the corset on the left side using the Laughing Moon "Dore" style pattern (sold in our pattern section of the catalog) and the one on the right is an original from the late 1890's and has almost exactly the same lines. The primary difference is size.

A Comparison of Historic and Contemporary Corsets

The original corset was made using cotton sateen twill for the outer layer and linen batiste for the inside. The modern one was made using black corset brocade for the exterior and plain cotton coutil on the inside.

Both corsets have twill tape sewn into the waist and both have a draw cord in the upper edge. The draw cord in the modern one is visible as a white cord encased in the bias cut binding of the top edge and the draw cord in the "antique" corset would have been the yellow ribbon just visible threaded through the lace (most of it had deteriorated.). Both corset have a straight busk, the antique one is raw steel and seems to be encased in a fine bucram, the modern one is plastic/nylon coated to inhibit rust. The busks were similar in ability to flex. The bones in the modern corset were encased between the two layers of coutil and were made of plastic. The bones in the antique version were encased in strips of casing cut from the same fabric as the exterior and sewn onto the outside, stitching on the inside is visible, these bones are whale bone/ baleen and narrower than most bones today. While the antique corset was smaller in circumference by about 5 inches it had a total of 14 more bones! It may be difficult to see in the photo but there is a lot of boning in the antique corset. The modern corset came out slightly heavier (but then it is larger both in length and circumference) and more supportive.

It was difficult to make any judgement on the whalebone as it is old and brittle and as the corset was not mine I was not inclined to try and flex it. It was quite visible where one casing had worn away and the end of the bone was sticking out. It was more three-dimensional than anything on the market today, being much like a tiny, long, thin, rectangular cube that was black in color.

The second set of corsets that I compared, were very different in cut from the others and from each other. The peach coloured corset on the left was made from the Laughing Moon "Silverado" corset pattern (the pattern can be found in the patterns section of the catalog). The white corset on the right is an antique one also from Robert Doyle's collection.

A Comparison of Historic and Contemporary Corsets

The antique corset on the right is a single layer corset made of fabric identical to our coutil #74-1141-01. The Laughing Moon corset was made with two layers of coutil. Both corsets used have steel bones, those in the antique one were spring steels wrapped in paper and those in the modern version are spirals. Both corsets have straight busks and both have draw cords/ribbons in the top edge incorporated with lace. Similar to the above listed corsets both of these have twill tape supports in the waist indicating that although styles changed, certain methods of construction remained the same.

The photo below shows the lining. The corset on the left is the antique, the corset on the right is the Laughing Moon "Silverado" corset.

A Comparison of Historic and Contemporary Corsets

This article has been kindly submitted by Farthingales Corset and Costume supplies

Please visit their website to read more about corset building and browse their inventory of corset and costume supplies