Corsets

"Progressing through almost two centuries of corset-making, this collection showcases a range of period pieces, from the 1750 whale-boned corsets, through the invention of the sewing machine and mass-produced corsets of the 1850s to the makeshift corsets of World War I." "Reflecting the changing fashions and attitudes of women throughout the centuries, the collection includes corsets for pregnancy, riding corsets for sportswomen and hard-wearing corsets for housemaids. There are even corsets for small children and their dolls." "Each corset features an annotated pattern, a detailed drawing and close-up photography so any historical detail can be captured accurately by the maker. Each pattern is accompanied by a brief overview that places the corset within its historical context and explains any features or alterations that are necessary for making up the patterns." "A must-have guide for anyone with an interest in fashion history, Corsets: Historical Patterns and Techniques is a treasure trove of information for fashion students, costume makers for stage and screen, reenactors and historians alike."--BOOK JACKET.

Stays and Corsets: Historical Patterns Translated for the Modern Body goes a step beyond traditional historical costuming texts by not only providing you with historical pattern diagrams and information, but by showing you how to adapt these patterns to the contemporary body shape. Using her original pattern-drafting system, author Mandy Barrington will show you how to draft a historical pattern for a modern body shape, while still retaining an accurate historical silhouette. Each pattern has been generated from an original stay, corset, or pattern taken from a historical garment. The instructions to follow these new patterns are designed to accommodate any size of female figure, allowing you to avoid extremely difficult, time consuming, and inaccurate historical pattern re-sizing Requiring only basic prior knowledge of pattern drafting, all calculations have been worked out for the costume maker and are provided in simple tables accompanied by easy-to-read, step-by-step diagrams that clearly show how the historical pattern is plotted onto the female basic block, coupled with photographs of the constructed stays and corsets.

Corsets and Crinolines is a study of the changing shapes of women's dress and how these were produced, how simple laced bodices became corsets of cane, whale-bone and steel, while padding at shoulders and hips gave way to the structures of farthingales, hoops and bustles. Added are contemporary tailors and dressmakers accounts, illustrations, index, a glossary of terms and materials, appendices on the repair and manufacture of corsets and crinolines.

Think of a corset as a blank canvas. Linda Sparks' The Basics of Corset Building: A Handbook for Beginners is a comprehensive guide to building your first corset, including: Section One: Tools and Materials for Corset Building Discusses the tools you'll need, plus types of steel, plastic, and textiles. Section Two: Building a Corset Everything you need to know about working with bones and busks, setting grommets and eyelets, and creating a beautifully finished corset. Section Three: Construction Techniques Covers all the steps, including making a modesty panel, making a mock-up, and building single layer, double layer, and fashion fabric corsets. Section Four: Alterations and Fit Discusses commercial corset patterns, as well as how to fit and style a corset for exactly the look you want.

Features hundreds of corset illustrations, 19th & 20th century corset ads, corset catalogs, department store corset ads, corset prices, unusual corsets, and historical notes.

Korsettets kulturhistorie fra renæssancen til det 20. århundrede

Today we are urged from all sides to slim down and shape up, to shed a few pounds or lose life-threatening stones. The media's relentless obsession with size may be perceived as a twenty-first-century phenomenon, but as award-winning historian Louise Foxcroft shows, we have been struggling with what to eat, when and how much, ever since the Greeks and the Romans first pinched an inch. Meticulously researched, surprising and sometimes shocking, Calories and Corsets tells the epic story of our complicated relationship with food, the fashions and fads of body shape, and how cultural beliefs and social norms have changed over time. Combining research from medical journals, letters, articles and the dieting bestsellers we continue to devour (including one by an octogenarian Italian in the sixteenth century), Foxcroft reveals the extreme and often absurd lengths people will go to in order to achieve the perfect body, from eating carbolic soap to chewing every morsel hundreds of times to a tasteless pulp. This unique and witty history exposes the myths and anxieties that drive today's multi-billion pound dieting industry - and offers a welcome perspective on how we can be healthy and happy in our bodies.

Maternity and Other Corsets is the story of Maebh Murray as she chases the bohemian life through Europe with a French alcoholic painter she meets in Prague the summer after the Velvet Revolution. They move to Paris and have a child, and Maebh becomes breadwinner by day and breast feeder by night. They try life in Greece, Ireland, and Spain, where she ponders her artistic pretensions, bad marriage, and parenting and how difficult it is, in an atmosphere of western arrogance that is blind to its own contradictions, to make it all work.