The corset, an article of clothing worn to shape or
restrict the torso, whether as underclothing or as outer
decoration. A garment of great antiquity, the corset goes back
at least to the 2nd millennium BC, when it was worn by Cretans
of the Minoan Bronze Age. Minoan women wore them as an outer
garment to cinch the waist and raise the breasts; they were
worn as well by Minoan men, who appeared wasp-waisted in
consequence.The guepiere, or waspie, as a modern day underclothing for
cinching the waist, is only one form the female corset has
taken; it has varied with the changing concepts of the ideal
figure. Between 1550 and 1660, corsets
had the
purpose of flattening the upper part of the body, including
the breasts; they were reinforced by busks, made generally of
wood. The much-embroidered and sometimes jeweled stomacher was
a kind of outer corset. After 1660 the corset became shorter
and was so shaped as to support and accentuate the breasts. It
went out of fashion briefly after the French Revolution during
the ascendancy of Directory and Empire fashions, which were
Grecian, diaphanous, and body-clinging; but it turned about
1810 and changed throughout the 19th century with the
ever-changing shape of dresses. By that time, corsets were
reinforced with whalebone and metal.
Although polemics against tight corsets are common in
literature from the late 17th century onward, no one seriously
tried to abolish them until 1908, when clothes with fluid
lines began to be designed to be worn without corsets. As
early as about 1870, women in the artistic coterie promoting
Aestheticism wore dresses with an uncorseted look. Neither of
those designs became high fashion, however, and corsets
continued to be worn until the 1920s, with the advent of
straight, unwaisted clothes. In the late 1930s there was an
attempt by designers to bring back the boned corset, but World
Was II cut short most stylish innovations.
The corset was greatly modified at the beginning of the
20th century: it was shorter and no longer supported the
breasts, leading to the invention of the brassiere (c. 1912 by
a Paris couturiere, Madame Cadolle). That garment and the
Cavalieri maillot (a topless corset made of elastic material,
c. 1913) were the prototypes of the brassiere and girdle (in
England called the belt) of the 1930s. The main innovations
(especially since the 1960s) incorporated improved
synthetic-elastic materials. The corselette, a one-piece
garment combining brassiere and girdle, was developed in the
1930s and is still worn.
