"What am I going to sell?"

In part 1, we looked at what it means to practise and prepare your corsetmaking skills in a considered manner, the purpose of this being that by practicing correctly, you will achieve more in a shorter space of time and gain more confidence in your abilities.

In part 2, we looked at how the core principles of your brand can help make study/practice decisions easier. Using Sparklewren as a personal example, I showed that knowing small details about the character of your work can lead you to learn more about the aesthetics and techniques that will be appropriate to your study choices.

Let's give another imagined example of how this process can work...

Shape and texture can impact upon one another. By creating separate layers for decoration and steel, I bypassed some issues but created others (namely, a difficulty maintaining smoothness). Think about the relationship between the shapes and textures you wish to combine.Perhaps you have spent some time reflecting and discovered that your main interest is tactility. You may have learnt therefore that the physical experience of wearing corsets, and the textural qualities of the garment's exterior, are your main interest.

It might then be the case, that your two main areas of study are:

1) Comfort

2) Manipulation of textiles

We can take this further, by considering how those two concerns impact upon one another.

You might discover that details such as quilted hip gussets reflect your interests perfectly, but that the associated steel placement (stopping above the gusset at the waist, for example) does not give the comfort level that you consider important.

So your study/practice tasks have now been refined to very particular and individual concerns: how to create the most beautifully textural surfaces and how to construct these items with a view to improving the comfort of them. In short, how to realise this particular idea differently to everyone else; how to take the idea closer and closer to its best expression.

Assessing these interests in their own right is a brilliant starting point. But if you are hoping to create a business you will also need to consider issues of commercial viability, time, working environment, etc.  What I hope to propose in this article is that these issues can be used to refine your practice choices further now, increasingly the suitability of the topics you study and enhancing your chances of success once you're accepting commissions.

Flights of Fancy

Imagining and visualising your future successful corsetry business isn't just a self-gratifying flight of fancy. It's a rather useful tool for establishing whether you are going in the right direction. Let's take a fictional new corsetmaker and imagine how she could identify and build appropriate skills more swiftly than she realises.

Harriet has made five corsets and is a good seamstress. She loves the look of silk taffeta bustle gowns and wants to incorporate the aesthetic (fabric, colours, style of trim) into outerwear corsetry design. Her last three corsets were attempts at this style, but sadly the results left her despondent about her abilities.

• In the first version, she used polyester taffeta (no interfacing/backing) and a cheap twill. Her corset had a lot of bias ripples, the taffeta had tiny pulls at each stitch, and minimal boning (one per seam) with the taffeta looking "baggy" at parts.

• In the second version, Harriet follows the same techniques, having been told that "practice makes perfect!" and that she just needs to try a few more times and it will start working. She's been told to try more steels, so she doubles them at each seam. The results are the same, though her stitching is a little neater.

• In the third version, Harriet has tried cutting the twill differently to reduce bias ripples in the corset. She has some success with this, but new ripples appear elsewhere. She fused a silk taffeta to a heavy interfacing this time, only to have crispy sections and bubbles appear. The other issues remain.

A PERSONAL NOTE:

You need to look forwards... your first "flawed" and ugly experiments are not indicative of your entire corsetmaking destiny!I remember what it's like to be just beginning your studies and be at that frustrating stage where things aren't quite working yet. I see lots of new corsetmakers online reach a similar point and then disappear, seemingly disheartened by their perceived lack of progress, but by pausing and assessing their work, new students can create practice habits that will let them progress more swiftly.

Here, right, is an early test toile of my own, made when I was learning the absolute basics of fit, shaping and construction. Horrible!

You need to look forwards to what you will achieve, not dwell on what you've previously managed... your first "flawed" and ugly experiments are not indicative of your entire corsetmaking destiny. If you work hard, your skill level will just keep on growing. But if you think, "this is terrible, I'll never be as good as X", then you're probably correct. Don't hold yourself back by reference to other makers, just focus on your own studies.

 

If Harriet is determined to continue making corsets and does not want to give up, what could she do to improve her work? There are dozens of different approaches and tricks she could try for improving the construction and smoothness of her taffeta corsets, so how on earth is she meant to choose the "right" one intelligently?

Our fictional lady needs to stop stitching for a moment and think about why she's making corsets.

Where does she want this to lead? What sort of work does she want to put out into the world? What is it about her approach or practice that is undermining these dreams?

Quite simply, the techniques that I (or Corsetiere X, or FR editor Cathy Hay, or anyone else...) might use to solve this problem are not necessarily the techniques that are most appropriate for Harriet. She needs to understand her end goal before she can develop the "right" techniques.

Let's imagine two routes...

1) A Little Shop

Harriet ultimately wants to have a little shop with a couple of seamstresses working for her producing affordable decorative corsetry. She thus needs to establish swift and repeatable processes of corsetmaking that she can teach to her future employees. She needs to make her pieces profitable with reference to the average price-point for that market. This gives us the following suggestions:

MATERIALS: Harriet must research her materials again. Is twill the best, inexpensive option? If the trade-off is a few bias ripples, can she and her customers accept that? If not, what alternatives are there?

She may learn that the bias of twill is perhaps not to her tastes and that a plain or herringbone weave is better. She may also learn (after testing a few fusibles) that backing the taffeta will work wonders if done right and that supplier X sells rolls of interfacing that are the perfect weight for fusing to taffeta without "crisping" up.

Her studies may involve spending a bit of extra money or time in the beginning, but by asking what materials will be appropriate for then ("then" being when running her dream shop), Harriet can make better choices for her practice now, saving the wasteful cost and confidence-bashing of numerous "failed" attempts. There's little point mastering the difficulties of twill (for example) if you will never use it once in business.

QUALITY: For her client base and price-point, is the odd skipped stitch or pull an issue? It is an unpopular thing to suggest that any corsetmaker or craftsperson would or should choose to accept a lower level of quality, but you must consider this seriously as a business person.  If your price-point only allows for, say, 2.5 hrs stitching time per corset, then endless corrections aren't possible. If the higher quality is not compensated for financially, your business will not survive as more than a hobby.

Harriet needs to decide whether the added time any particular technique requires will be compensated for financially once in business. She may also find herself considering the most inexpensive ways to boost quality in the long run. It may be that an initial investment in an industrial machine is worthwhile, for example. The machine could soon "pay for itself" through the time it saves and the consistent quality of stitching it allows. Likewise, she may want to invest in other items that speed up work (such as professional grommet setters or fusing presses) early on, since her business will only ultimately succeed by selling a high number of items each month.

STUDY TIME: If Harriet selected this business model, she may be ready to sell sooner than she expects. Her focus must be on repeatable processes, inexpensive materials, and a reliably nice fit. She probably won't need to study unusual details such as fully-boned corsets, sheers, cording, flossing and so on, though she probably will want to spend time developing and testing standard sized patterns. This tells us that Harriet should focus her time on pattern development (creating test pieces specific to her target market's figure types) and only one or two construction methods. The study of other, more unusual, details can come later.

PERSONALITY: Perhaps in considering all this, Harriet discovers that she is most in love with design and patterning, and that stitching is simply a "necessary evil". If so, she might want to focus on finding skilled machinists for her workshop. This would create a business structure that would allow her to focus on the areas she loves and has confidence in, potentially resulting in a business that will have more longevity than if she were to tackle it all alone.

So Harriet has dramatically reduced the number of specific skills she needs to master in order to be confident taking on clients. She has refined what she must practice, along with why she is doing so.

 

2) Rare One-off Pieces

In this scenario, Harriet wants to produce elaborate and costly bespoke pieces, where money is no object and quality is everything. This tells us that her approach could change thusly:

MATERIALS: Some fabrication choices cannot be learnt without using the particular fabric. Practicing on twill, cheap muslins and such is absolutely worthwhile, but it doesn't teach you much about working specifically with the most expensive coutils, for example.

If Harriet ultimately intends to use coutil, she may need to swallow the expense and begin studying with it. After all, the results can be so different that one can learn more by making one coutil corset than ten twill equivalents. If you never intend to use a fabric/technique once in business, don't waste your time and money practicing with it now. If you intend to only use coutil for clients, don't perfect corsets made from canvas.

QUALITY: Clearly, for this approach, quality is massively important. Further, it can be made more difficult to achieve due to the higher number of processes that each garment goes through. The higher the number of steps involved, the higher the chance of things going wrong. But for Harriet's price-point and chosen fabrications, the extra time spent on practising and achieving unusual quality is absolutely crucial. She will quickly come to realise that the excessive time involved is, in fact, one of the special qualities of her work.

STUDY TIME: For this business model, it is clear that time is required for Harriet to achieve work of an appropriate standard. But, much like with option 1, if Harriet breaks down her product into perhaps one key design, she has only to master the one technique before she can begin accepting a few small orders. Other techniques may follow later, if she wishes it, so more time will be needed. But this should not be measured in days or years. It's simply a question of working until the desired quality is achieved.

PERSONALITY: In this imagined scenario, Harriet may have realised that she hates working alone, but that her sole creation of the garments is an important detail to her client base. Perhaps taking interns to help with non-stitching tasks is an option? Or perhaps she needs to structure her work (and by extension, her pricing) so that she only spends three or four days a week working alone, with the remaining weekdays devoted to artistic development (visiting galleries, sketching, etc.). Thus, her brand, pricing, everything can be refined to suit her character, again creating a business that should have better longevity.

So Harriet has established what she hopes to achieve one day. Should she wait around and continue practicing with hit-and-miss attempts at every technique? Or should she focus on the smaller details of one or two particular options? Again, she has refined what she must practice, along with why she is doing so.

Know Where You're Going

Cheesy visual analogy: if you identify your destination, you can begin to see the route/ladder/path to take you there. Image courtesy of Koustav2007Having given an idea of how these two future business models could impact Harriet's practice choices today, what have we learned?

We've learned that she simply needs to know where she's going so that she may identify how to get there. If we continue now with option 1 we can answer questions about how she could prepare her skills in more detail.

Harriet now knows where she wants her corsetmaking to take her. She has identified the quality required, the price-point, the budget she has for material costs and potential shop overheads, and her aesthetic preferences. She knows that her techniques must be repeatable and teachable. She knows that she doesn't want to stitch, but to focus on design instead.

She can now see that certain aspects of her taffeta corset must change and that just a little bit of reflection and research can improve it vastly.

•  She may choose to swap out the twill for a plain weave poplin or similar, having established a source for inexpensive bulk purchases (thus minimising the bias ripples).

•  She may fuse her fashion fabric to her strength layer, using applied interior casings to hold steels, and sticking to polyester taffetas for budgetary reasons and because it top-stitches more easily than the silk versions.

•  She may look into bulk suppliers for needles and discover (through a few small samplers) that certain types suit taffeta better, thus reducing those pulls even further.

•  She may discover that the "bagginess" at parts of her corset comes from rushing the stitching and creating slippage between the layers, thus leading on to the exploration of walking feet, spray basting, and/or a slower approach to stitching in general. She might then find herself testing out a few industrial machines with these characteristics, and talking with experienced machinists about their suggestions.

In short, Harriet now has a small selection of areas to practice and research that make sense to her end goals. She doesn't need to waste time and money making another three disappointing corsets with little progress; she may instead find that three more take her to exactly where she needs to be.

Each time you make a new corset, you are practicing. Whatever end goals you have, keeping one eye fixed on them will help make practice/study choices easier now. As you progress, you will be able to trace a history of progress through your work (below, left and right). Some of these improvements will be small, others will feel enormous!

Left: Early test piece. Plunge corset, with minimal boning, boring waist shaping (in my retrospective opinion!) and obligatory beginner's wrinkles at the side-bust. The finish of the interior (hand-finished binding and facings) wasn't brilliant either.

Right: 2011 corset. Plunge bust with more elegant cut, improved patterning through waist, more elegantly decorated, and no wrinkles.  Impeccable interior finish.

In the meantime, simply sell corsets using the techniques you have practiced and politely decline any requests for techniques you aren't comfortable with. Take commissions on the skills you do have (including transferable skills) and you will be confident that you have prepared appropriately.

Summary

It doesn't matter where anyone else is going or whether you fully understand their aims... Image courtesy of Vyczko.Online, corsetieres are wonderfully (but artificially) pressed up against one another, which I imagine is the case in any niche craft/art area. We can discuss ideas, technique, definitions of "quality" and so on. But we can also get rather heated over these questions, with many wanting to establish a definitive consensus of "good" and "bad". The idea that we each want to produce garments with different price-points, quality, and intention can cause friction, which I feel filters down to the customers and creates tension.

So as wonderful as the online community is, I think we also need to be more tolerant. Not just because it's a nice hippyish way to be, but because it works out best for everyone's own hopes and dreams. We need to be able to say, "this is what I consider to be a great corset, that is what you consider to be a great corset, and we're both right."

Our fictional Harriet could have a twin sister or brother pursuing the "opposite" option to her, and they would both be valid approaches. The further I go with corsetry, the more and more I believe it is exceptionally important to develop confidence in your own approach, confidence that relies upon passion for your work and acceptance of others' work. After all, there are dozens of people ready to give you their opinion and they can't all be right. This is one of the reasons I enjoy Foundations Revealed: we have such a wide range of ideas and approaches presented here that it is very inclusive, and I think this is very important for those new to the craft or just about to go into business.

As I've mentioned before, so long as your corsets function as required, everything else is open to interpretation, which is a wonderful thing! It results in great variety and discussion. After all, how dull would it be to make beautiful corsetry and not be able to share it with others who understand when you say things like, "I did a paper mock-up of that fiddly corset (you know... the one from Haabet with the diagonal side-front lacing), but it doesn't give the sharp hipspring that I want so I might try cutting something similar from scratch instead..."?

It doesn't matter where anyone else is going or whether you understand their aims... It doesn't even matter whether you agree with my own priorities as a corsetiere or have wildly different ambitions. As a writer, this series of articles is all about creating the tools, practice strategies and thought processes through which you can create your own set of "rules".

Focus on your own specific goals and the resulting specific ways to prepare. Get ready to create your own work, your own way, for your own business. That way you'll know for yourself when you're ready to sell.

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