vanilla ice

Corsets have probably been worn for erotic purposes during all that time, even while they had been gone from fashion. Only in the 1980s, Madonna brought them back into public attention with the help of her favorite designer, Gaultier – as top garment. Her version, however, was more like a tight bodice than a proper corset. Nowadays, real corsets are only rarely worn. Sometimes a celebrity or lover of historical fashion may wear it visibly as a fashion statement, but mostly, it still is worn underneath for erotic reasons. Whether they be waist-cinchers, under-bust, half-bust or full-bust: The basic shape is still the same as 1860-80, only that they usually don't compress the waist nearly as much.

Sometimes even apparently trustworthy sources spread wrong or at least highly doubtful statements about corsets. Some of them are based on wrong interpretations of contemporary sources, some on contemporary sources that exaggerate for some reason.

Most legends of course are about impossibly small waists. The "oldest" and most extreme one is the one that asserts that Katerina de' Medici, Queen of France in the late 16th century, required her ladies-in-waiting to have 13 inch waists. Someone who doesn't use inches in everyday life will first try to convert that into centimetres and then start to wonder which inch they should use since there were so many different units of that name. Someone must have written about it in Katerina's time – which inch did they use? Did the author (19th century, I think) that spread this legend know or even think about the fact that there were different inches about? Did they convert them to modern inches, and if yes: To which one? And did they have proper information about how long a contemporary inch was? That's a lot of questions already. And the 19th century author may well have invented it all, because as far as I know, no contemporary source for the statement has been found. Well, let's just say we're talking about 13 British Imperial inches. Even the most extreme modern-day exponent of tight-lacing, Cathy Jung, only manages 15 Imperial inches in an hourglass corset. With a 16th century conical corset, this would be impossible even if one takes into consideration that women used to be smaller then.

The waist of Empress Sisi of Austria is sometimes given as 40 cm, sometimes as 47, and even as 50 cm. That variance alone should engender doubt. However, it is well known that she was a victim of her own vanity.

Some early photographs show women – mostly actresses – with extreme waists. In some cases, the rigid, artificial-looking posture shows that this was not their normal state. Retouching was used extensively in those days and brought forth masters of the art. Porn photographs of the time show women who would not be considered slender by modern standards. Contemporary patterns of the 1880s quote waist measurements of 58-64 cm, those of the 1890s (the height of tight-lacing) 54-60 cm. With an average height of 160 cm, this seems realistic.

Sometimes you find quotes from late 19th century magazines reporting that a lady died after having taken a fall in the street. A broken rib was pressed inwards by the tightly laced corset, causing it to puncture a lung or the liver. I have even seen a contemporary magazine which reported the story and therefore believed it – until I found the same story, slightly altered, quoted from a different magazine, from a different year. I am now convinced that we're dealing with an urban legend.

source : marquise.de