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Historical Fashion

Edwardian Corset Part 1

This weekend I got some help fitting my Edwardian Corset! I’m pretty good at fitting on myself, but not only is fitting a corset on yourself EXTREMELY hard, but I also needed an experienced eye for this one. Most of the reference images I’m finding are illustrations so stylized with miniscule waists and odd proportions, it’s hard to know how the corset should realistically fit. When Lauren from Wearing History said she could come up for a visit over the weekend, I immediately planned to rope her into my Edwardian world.

This is my scaled up version of the 1901 Corset from Hunnisett’s Period Costumes for Stage and Screen. I got lucky and the basic pattern is close to my size. This is actually my second mockup – the first one I took out from the bust and hips (not anything from the waist, boo!). Now I see I could have made more changes on the first go-round, but I didn’t know what I was doing! There are no bones in this mockup, and the final version will have a center opening busk.

(Man, my shoulders are way crooked. That’s all I can see when I look at these photos. Time for a massage!)

We shortened the body length about 1″ total so that the top of the corset hits at or just slightly above my apex. I also needed a little more gap at the CB, so we decided to take that out of the hip gussets. We got tired and didn’t pin out the total amount, that’s why it’s still too close at the bottom gap.
On the side view, you can see a little bit of the Edwardian “S” curve posture, where I’m tipped forward on top and backward on the bottom.
I think one more mockup for this guy, and then I’m gonna start on the real deal!

“Fashioning a Collection”: Costume Mannequins

Last weekend I attended the Fifth R.L. Shep Triennial Symposium on Textiles and Dress, “Fashioning a Collection: Vision and Viewpoints”. The symposium had been sold out for weeks, so when I was offered an extra ticket I jumped at the chance! (Thanks Lauren!) It was an amazing day of talks and papers, focusing on both LACMA’s current “Fashioning Fashion” exhibition and the scholarship behind it.

Akiko Fukai, the director and chief curator of the Kyoto Costume Institute, opened the day’s talks. She spoke about how the KCI was one of the first major institutions to collect western historical fashions in the 1970’s, and how they were able to develop their collection for a relatively low cost because there wasn’t competition from other museums at the time. It sounds like they acquired their collection for a tiny fraction of what it would cost today!

She also spoke about the physical considerations of displaying these historical garments – Fukai described it as a challenge to display them in an “authentic and artistic” manner, which is even harder to do in Japan, because they have had to learn what this means in a western culture. To accomplish this, the KCI has developed a range of mannequins that have different body types (sloping shoulders, high bust, monobosom, etc.) and are highly adjustable in their size and movement. They can’t just pin the garments back like in a shop window, so they have to make the mannequin fit the clothing!

Front and Profile View of Mannequins – 18th C, Beginning 19th C., Mid 19th C., Belle Epoque (L to R)
Mannequins showing life-like movement
If you’re interested in how LACMA set up their exhibition, check out their blog entry, Fashioning Mannequins. What a fascinating job it would be to dress these dolls!