How the corset FAKED ITS DEATH : Fashion history murder mystery, or shapewear marketing?

The Victorian corset went out of fashion in the 1920s-- but had fashion killed corsets? Were they in hiding, cleverly disguised as girdles and body shapers? Time for a vintage shapewear murder mystery! Thank you Birch Living for sponsoring! Click here https://birchliving.com/snappydragon to get 20% off your Birch mattress (plus two free Eco-Rest pillows!). #birchliving

Victorian corsets tortured and restricted women into uncomfortable fashions with tight lacing, until the 1920s when they suddenly went out of use : that's the story we know. But the truth is so much more complex! There were a huge number of reasons fewer women wore corsets from the Edwardian era to the Jazz age, but corsets didn't truly go out of fashion until much later. The reason we think they did is a complicated tangle of underwear marketing history! The old fashioned corset evolved and changed from the S-bend Edwardian corset shape into the more familiar undergarments for women of the 20th century. What's the difference between a boned corset and a body shaper, or a foundation garment, or an abdominal belt support garment? All it really comes down to is fashion marketing.

What is a corset, and what is shapewear? If you think about it, a girdle is really just an underbust corset by a different name! This is how the corset came to be replaced by body shapers and brassieres. The slim, empire waist fashions of the 1910s Titanic era had already made underbust corsets more fashionable than overbust ones, so as the 1920s went on, these underbust corsets took on straighter shapes and different names like garter belt and girdle. Meanwhile, WWI rationing and the underbust corset fashions had encouraged the development of bras, brassieres, and bandeaus for bust support-- the ancestors of the modern bra. These undergarments for women didn't mean corsetry went totally out of fashion, it just changed shape over time. For the boyish, straight lines of 1920s fashion the corset or foundation garment flattened the bust and hips. Into the 1940s and 50s, it developed into the waist cincher shapewear that supported the hourglass New Look 1950s fashions. So is your shapewear bodysuit a modern corset? Maybe! But the 1920s didn't kill the corset; it simply went into hiding. Underwear marketing was determined that corsetry and the corset industry should survive, so the corset changed its name and disguised itself as other foundation garments and types of shapewear.

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Photo of the "Silver Tissue" 1660s court dress by Ludi Lung, lisenced CC-BY-SA 3.0 : https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...