The Heritage of Dress: Being Notes on the History and Evolution of Clothes

by Wilfred Mark Webb

Now we may discuss the apparatus which has been degraded into carrying out the painful duty of producing an attenuated figure. The name stays indicates exactly the original intention of the clothing to which it is applied; but unfortunately something more than mere support has been sought after at various times since the classic period to which the beginnings of stays may be traced. The pair of stays which together form the modern corset—sometimes ignorantly and by false analogy supplied with an extra “s”—is what is now used for purposes of compression. Proximately the idea is that of improving the figure, as it is called, and ensuring that it can be covered with garments of a fashionable shape. The ultimate results are about as bad as they can be, and it is not a question of opinion in this case, for the evil effects can be easily demonstrated. Sir William Flower[54] refers to the practice as being “one of the most remarkable of all the artificial deformities produced by adherents to a conventional standard, in defiance of the dictates of Nature and of reason.” He points out that in the process of deforming the skull, to which we shall allude later, the latter being a solid case with tolerably uniform walls, its capacity remains the same whatever alterations may be made in the shape, but in the case of the body it is quite another matter. It can, in fact, be well likened to a cylinder of fixed length which is closed above and below by a framework of bone, and circular compression must actually diminish the area which has to be occupied by some of the most vital organs. He goes on to say that the framework of the chest is a most admirable and complex arrangement of numerous pieces of solid bone and elastic cartilage joined together in such a manner as to allow of expansion and contraction for the purposes of respiration—expansion and contraction which, if a function so essential to the preservation of life and health is to be performed in an efficient manner, should be perfectly free and capable of variation under different circumstances. So, indeed, it has been allowed to be in all parts of the world and in all ages with one exception. It was reserved for mediæval civilized Europe to have invented the system of squeezing together, rendering immobile, and actually deforming the most important part of the human frame; and the custom has been handed down to, and flourishes in, our day, notwithstanding all our professed admiration for the models of classical antiquity, and our awakened attention to the laws of health.

The crusade against corsets is by no means confined to this country; even the educational authorities in America and on the continent of Europe have dealt pretty drastically with the matter. It is said, moreover, that the Queen of Portugal has brought before the ladies of her Court the evils of tight lacing, by means of radiographs. There have been other times when even laws have been made with regard to the corset, which, it appears, was first employed for a wrong purpose in mediæval times. It is said of the time of Henry III of France that the corset was no longer the simple basquine that was inoffensive enough at first.[55] The corps piqué which was endured by the fair ladies of the period was an instrument of torture. A hard solid mould into which the wearer had to be compressed, there to remain and suffer in spite of the splinters of wood that penetrated the flesh, took the skin off the waist, and made the ribs ride one over the other. Montaigne and Ambrose Paré are witnesses, and the latter must have known something about the question. It is not, perhaps, surprising that Charles IX and Henry III brought in stringent laws on the subject.

We are told[56] that with Catherine de Medici’s ascent to the throne the habit became compulsory. She gave her subjects no choice, and said that all women of good birth and breeding should wear corsets which would reduce their waists to the abnormal size of thirteen inches.

In our country on various occasions lacing was carried to extremes, as in the time of Henry VIII. In Elizabeth’s time, the forerunner of the busks was not fastened to the stays, but consisted of a piece of carved wood which was pushed down inside the bodice. (See Plate [XI].) Some of the outer bodices in the times of the early Georges seem to be as hard and unyielding as if they were intended for armour. Tin stays were not unheard of in the days of the earlier colonists in America.

Wooden stay busks. These incidentally show survivals of primitive ornament.

From the “Reliquary,” by kind permission of Messrs. Bembrose & Sons, Ltd.

PLATE XI.

The craze for tight lacing once more made itself felt at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and not many years before the end one heard from time to time of the cruelty that was practised at high-class schools for young ladies, where the girls were made to sleep in specially tight and rigid corsets.