Ananya Ranjit
Alongside the whimsy of Y2k fashion, the turn of the decade also marked the advent of what Tiktok fashionistas have called ‘#Regencycore’. Prompted undoubtedly by the release of Bridgerton on Christmas day 2020, the ‘Cottagecore’ girls were soon seen giving their cardigans and nap dresses a rest, opting instead for 18th and 19th-century-inspired ruffles, empire lines, and elbow-length gloves. Tying it all together? The mighty corset.
According to the social shopping site, Lyst, there was a 306 percent increase in searches for corsets in 2021. In the summer of 2022, she cemented her status as the ‘It’ girl among wardrobe staples, while also becoming one of Urban Outfitters’ bonafide bestsellers (you know exactly which one I’m talking about). Several colours and restocks later, I think it’s safe to assume that corsets are here to stay, at least for a little bit.
But what are the implications of this within a contemporary context, where Kardashians define body standards and facetuning is the norm? Following the revival of Y2k, a trend most prominently associated with toxic diet culture and body standards, does the return of corsets also hearken back to an era of ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’?
A Brief History of the Corset
While corset-like garments may be traced back, in the Western world to as far as 1600 BC, they were most commonly worn between the 16th and the early 20th century to shape the body into distinctive silhouettes. They often had stiff cotton cording that was inserted with long, flat pieces of whalebone, wood, or even, metal (called ‘busks’) that raised and shaped the bust and maintained posture by supporting the back and shoulders. While these were slightly narrow at the waist and created an illusion of the cone silhouette, corsets in the 1700s were rather comfortable and did not restrict breathing. At the turn of the 19th century , these had evolved into ‘short-stays’ (I.e. did not extend very far below the bust), as the high-waisted empire lines de-emphasised the natural waist. This continued until the 1830s, when the invention and subsequent implementation of metal-eyelets in corsetry gave rise to the practice of tight-lacing.
“Side effects ranging from respiratory diseases to the damage of internal organs”
Much of the ‘body damaging’ reputation of the corset began here, as laces were threaded through metal eyelets at the back of a full-length bodice, allowing the waist to be tightly constricted, thus creating an exaggeratedly curvaceous hourglass shape. Such Victorian corsets were associated with a plethora of side effects ranging from respiratory diseases to the damage of internal organs, alongside miscarriages and birth defects. While these have since been refuted, some fashion historians acknowledge that corsets may indeed have caused depleted lung volume, fainting spells , and lowered vitality.
Such concerns regarding tight-laced corsets eventually gave rise to the Edwardian corset in the early 1900s, which was intended to be less injurious to the wearer’s health due to allayed pressure on the stomach area. Also called the ‘swan-bill corset’, these garments had a rigid, straight busk running down the center front that forced the torso forward and made the hips jut out at the back, which counteracted its intended purpose, causing considerable injury to the back by forcing an unnatural posture upon its wearer.
By the 1920s, the invention of elastic gave rise to flexible sports corsets used by women attracted to a fit, athletic lifestyle. The design of these new corsets may be viewed as initial versions of the girdles and compression underwear that eventually replaced them. Towards the end of the Second World War, corsets, as an undergarment was completely abandoned, however their focus on sculpting bodies to achieve a ‘desirable’ shape, was well ingrained in women’s minds, who now turned to exercise, stringent diets, and surgery to achieve shapely bodies and thinner waists.
Dame Vivienne Westwood
In the 1970s, she first brought back corsets as part of her historicist punk aesthetic and experimentation with fetish wear at SEX, the King’s Road boutique she ran with Malcolm McLaren. In doing so, she reimagined these garments as a way to empower women rather than bind them.
In 1987, she reignited the corset revolution through her seminal collection with Harris Tweed, where she unveiled the ‘Stature of Liberty’, an 18th-century-inspired corset that was decisively styled as outerwear and stood as a reclamation of female power and sexuality. Westwood reprised the corset once again, in 1990, with the launch of the Portrait Collection, which had François Boucher’s painting ‘Shepherd Watching a Sleeping Shepherdess’ printed across the front of her Liberty corset and proved to be one of the most iconic and provocative examples of corsetry. Despite borrowing heavily from traditional corset designs, Westwood’s corsets featured lycra-paneled sides and a zip at the back, making them comfortable to wear, with minimal to no waist constrictions.
Corsets Today
If one views the corset trends popular today, it is apparent that these are largely reflective of the post-1970s reincarnation of corsets, i.e they are intended to be a style statement and have minimal waist-shaping capabilities. While they do incorporate several key features of their predecessors, such as the boned cording, metal eyelets and lacing, and the corset ‘hooks and eyes’, these serve little more than only aesthetic purposes.
” Lily James’ already corseted waist in the celebrated blue gown, that she said ‘pulled me into the inch of my life.'”
Within the context of body positivity and body image discourses, it remains important to acknowledge that current conceptions of corsets do not include waist trainers or other forms of shapewear, even though they essentially perform the same function as a traditional corset. And while I do understand that modern shapewear isn’t all that damaging to the body (since the waist returns to its natural shape soon after they are removed), one needs to consider that the promoters of these products are celebrities like the Kardashians, whose unrealistic bodies have, for years, been offered up as the ideal to emulate. The 2015 film ‘Cinderella’, a fairy tale, popularly consumed by young children (especially young girls), was accused of using CGI to alter Lily James’ already corseted waist in the celebrated blue gown, that she said “pulled me into the inch of my life”, thereby fabricating an unattainable hourglass shape. However, on the opposite end of the spectrum, we have Emma Watson, who similarly played princess Belle in the 2017 film ‘Beauty and the Beast’, but refused to squeeze her body into a restrictive corseted gown, since she did not want to promote an unrealistic body type. Even so, we are still left with the unanswerable debate of ‘authenticity versus responsibility’. Had the gown looked different, would we have still seen Lily James as the iconic ‘Cinderella’, caricatured in a myriad of productions? What is the role of artistic expression within such debates? Does it come with a responsibility to create work that is authentic or to represent the constantly evolving ideologies of modern society?
“If you like it, wear it!”
Overall, I believe that we are still in a transitional, in-between sort of space when it comes to body image, whereby we are aware of the impossible standards imposed upon us and aim to overcome them, but on some level, still hope to adhere to them. Nonetheless, with the body diversity and positivity celebrated today, I am certain that we are wiser than wanting to contort our bodies into shapes they can’t fit.
In the end, it’s your body babe, be it a thrifted boned corset or an Urban corset, if you like it, wear it!
Featured image courtesy of Sergey Meshkov on Pexels. No changes were made to this image. Image license found here.
