General use of the word "stays" after 1600 in England—Costume of the court of Louis XVI.—Dress in 1776—The formidable stays and severe constriction then had recourse to—The stays drawn by Hogarth—Dress during the French revolutionary period—Short waists and long trains—Writings of Buchan—Jumpers and "Garibaldis"—Return to the old practice of tight-lacing—Training of figures: backboards and stocks—Medical evidence in favour of stays—Fashion in the reign of George III.—Stays worn habitually by gentlemen—General use of Corsets for boys on the Continent—The officers of Gustavus Adolphus—The use of the Corset for youths: a letter from a gentleman on the subject of—Evidence regarding the wearing of Corsets by gentlemen of the present day—Remarks on the changes of fashion—The term "Crinoline" not new—Crinoline among the South Sea Islanders—Remarks of Madame La Sante on Crinoline and slender waists—Abstinence from food as an assistance to the Corset—Anecdote from the Traditions of Edinburgh—The custom of wearing Corsets during sleep, its growing prevalence in schools and private families: letters relating to—The belles of the United States and their "illusion waists"—Medical evidence in favour of moderately tight lacing—Letters from ladies who have been subjected to tight-lacing.
For some considerable period of time we find stays much more frequently spoken of than corsets in the writings of English authors, but their use continued to be as general and their form of construction just as unyielding as ever, both at home and abroad. The costume worn at the court of Louis XVI., of which the following illustration will give an idea, depended mainly for its completeness on the form of the stays, over which the elaborately-finished body of the dress was made to fit without fold or crease, forming a sort of bodice, which in many instances was sewn on to the figure of the wearer after the stays had been laced to their extreme limit. The towering headdress and immensely wide and distended skirt gave to the figure an additional appearance of tenuity, as we have seen when describing similar contrivances in former times. Most costly laces were used for the sleeves, and the dress itself was often sumptuously brocaded and ornamented with worked wreaths and flowers. High-heeled shoes were not wanting to complete the rather astounding toilet of 1776. For many years before this time, and, in fact, from the commencement of the eighteenth century, it had been the custom for staymakers, in the absence of any other material strong and unyielding enough to stand the wear and tension brought to bear on their wares, to employ a species of leather known as "bend," which was not unlike that used for shoe-soles, and measured very nearly a quarter of an inch in thickness. The stays made from this were very long-waisted, forming a narrow conical case, in the most circumscribed portion of which the waist was closely laced, so that the figure was made upright to a degree. Many of Hogarth's figures, who wear the stays of his time (1730), are erect and remarkably slender-waisted. Such stays as he has drawn are perfectly straight in cut, and are filled with stiffening and bone.
Court Dress of the Reign of Louis XVI.
Classic Costume of the French Revolutionary Period.
In 1760 we find a strong disposition manifested to adopt the so-called classic style of costume. During the French revolutionary movement and in the reign of the First Napoleon, the ladies endeavoured to copy the costume of Ancient Greece, and in 1797 were about as successful in their endeavours as young ladies at fancy dress balls usually are in personating mermaids or fairy queens. The annexed illustration represents the classic style of that period. For several years the ladies of England adopted much the same style of costume, and resorted to loose bodies—if bodies they might be called—long trains, and waists so short that they began and ended immediately under the armpits. The following illustration represents a lady of 1806. Buchan, in writing during this short-waisted, long-trained period, congratulates himself and society at large on the fact of "the old strait waistcoats of whalebone," as he styles them, falling into disuse. Not long after this the laws of fashion became unsettled, as they periodically have done for ages, and the lines written by an author who wrote not long after might have been justly applied to the changeable tastes of this transition period:—