Most garments don't come with a clear provenance. The receipts are tossed after purchase, they are worn without documentation, and they aren't precious enough to store properly for ages. When they fall out of style, or fall apart, they are either repurposed or simply thrown away. This is especially true of undergarments. Do you hold on to your undergarments when they are worn out and no longer fit properly? Have you kept the original tags? Advertisements where they were featured? I certainly don't, and I doubt I'm that different from most people.

With many garments we have to sleuth to find their story, and so it was with this corset.

It was listed on Ebay as an Old Victorian Corset. There were no measurements given and only one photo of the corset laid flat on a vinyl floor. It wasn't in the best shape and it didn't look Victorian. The seller could give me no additional information, her response to the questions I asked was that she was just helping a friend sell things found in the attic. I typed in my highest bid, $20, and waited, and a couple of days later I was the proud owner of a mystery corset.

 

After the corset arrived, shipped to me from a town outside Philadelphia, I set about figuring out what I had. This was no high end corset. There was no designer label or stamp. Other than the number 43751 stamped in red ink on the interior on the both sides of the busk, and the number 23 stamped in black on the loop side, there were no identifying marks.   There was no engraving on the busk or garter grips to give me any clues, but I was able to find an advertisement from 1910 with a similarly designed grip.

 

There was no flossing to hold the boning in place. The corset was made of a plain, sturdy cotton drill, not a fancy brocade or satin. The cut was uncomplicated, without tightly curved seams or gores, and was thus easy to sew.

The self fabric bias trim along the top and bottom edges was not finished by tucking the ends of the trim under. It was simply cut and left raw at the center front and center back. There was no waist tape. It was machine sewn at 14 stitches per inch (1.8mm stitch length).

The fabric at the center front was slit to allow the busk loops to pass through, instead of leaving openings between the center front panel and a facing. These slits were not finished in any way.  The fabric at the center front was folded back on itself to make the channel for the busk, saving fabric, cutting time, and sewing time.

The only decorative touch was an inch-wide band of cotton lace across the top edge (one must keep things feminine). The corset was mostly likely mass-produced at a factory, probably a place we would call a sweat shop today.

The corset had been worn, hard. The bones had worn through the casings on a few spots inside and broken through the exterior fabric at the bottom on both sides along the grommets.  

The bones along the sides of the grommets at the center back had bent to the shape of the body, and the busk had curved.  The hook half of the hook and eye under the busk was hanging on by a thread, literally. Add to this stains from wear and damage from rust, and the result was a corset that had seen better days.

By holding the corset to the light I could see through the fabric and learn more about how it was built.The 3/8" (1cm) seam allowances were pressed towards the center back, and simple casings for the bones were made by pressing the edges of a strip of the same fabric under 1/8" (3mm). I could also make out the ¼" (7mm) wide boning, and one channel with ½" (13mm) boning. I held a magnet to the bones: it held, so they were steel.  

 

 The Corset Pattern

To learn a bit more, I made a pattern of the corset. Once sewn up I'd be able to see how the corset shaped the figure, which would help with dating it. I'd never made a pattern from an existing garment but this looked doable. Since I owned the corset, and it clearly wasn't a museum piece, I had no qualms about handling it.

Lining each section up on a grainline drawn on a piece of paper, and holding the fabric in position with weights, I measured across at every inch the length of each piece, then drafted the pattern by transferring the measurements to another piece of paper and connecting the marked points using a hip curve. Amazingly, when I trued the seamlines, the biggest difference was only 1/8" (3mm). Not bad.

Download Joanne's pattern for this corset in PDF format

For more details about taking patterns from antique corsets, see Jill Salen's article

Once I had the pattern pieces I measured across to find the narrowest width, the waistline. 11 5/8" (29.5cm) was the smallest measurement, and the line it fell on corresponded to the horizontal wrinkles across the corset. The measurement across the top was 14 1/8" (35.9cm), and the widest point across the hips, 18 1/8" (46.0cm). Doubling these gave the corset's full measurements, underbust 28¼ " (71.7cm), waist 23¼" (59.0cm), hips 36¼" (92.0cm). That extra ¼" (6mm) on all three measures seemed odd. Trimming 1/8" (3mm) from the center back rounded all the measurements to whole numbers, so that is what I did. It also brought the waist measure to 23" (58.4cm), which matched the black 23 printed on the busk, the size of the corset.

Recreating the Corset

I wanted to make my version with similar materials and use similar construction techniques. I opted for an off-white with navy stripes mattress ticking, burgundy bias binding, and off-white cotton lace. The ticking had a tight weave and was very stiff, plus the corsets in many period illustrations had stripes so I thought it suited this job.  That said, the thin navy stripes against the white were a bit contrasty for my taste so I used the reverse side of the ticking as the face.

Dessous Elegants March 1910, page 50

 

At 33" (84cm) wide, one yard of the ticking was just enough fabric for the body of the corset. I used the burgundy bias trim to bind the edges, and constructed the casings for the boning using a method similar to the one used for the original casings, a fabric strip with the edges tucked under. Since the thin bias would not be strong enough on its own for casings I laid a strip of coutil on the bias tape and folded the edges around it.
A few other changes were made in the construction of this corset: I finished the ends of the bias trim by folding them under instead of just cutting them off, and I bound the slits for the loops of the busk.
I eliminated the hook and eye below the busk. A modern day hook and eye was too small and did not look correct. If I find a properly sized set I can add them later. I also covered the garters instead of leaving them plain elastic.
The busk is the same length as the original, and I used flat steel boning, ¼" and ½" (7mm and 13mm), in the same lengths and placed in the same positions as in the original. The bones on either side of the lacing and in the channels on the seams of the back panels are 16½" (42cm) long. The others are all much shorter, ending above the hips.

The finished reproduction creates a lovely long line.The waist is nicely shaped, and there is a clear curve along the center back when viewed from the side.

 

 

It's possible to get an even better idea of the fit when the corset is worn by a model. The line along the center back is curvier on a real body. The top edge ends below the bust, and the bottom edge is just below the pelvis.The unboned fabric at the hips skirts the top of the thighs but does not prohibit movement. The corset is lies smoothly on the body when the model leans forward; we can assume this would have been the ideal posture at the time.

Dating the Corset

To help date the corset I made a timeline of corsetted figures. Changes in fashion can be subtle from one year to the next, but the evolution of the fashionable silhouette is clear when images from each year are lined up chronologically. I used images from clearly dated advertisements in magazines and catalogs for the years between 1900 and 1919. The predominant shape from each year was chosen, and I preferred advertisements with copy that read "for average figures." 

The model's posture, leaning slightly forward but not bending the torso back above the waist, helps indicate the year the corset was made. The arc of the spine, not an extreme S bend but still a noticeable curve, places it closer to 1910 than the turn of the century, when the dip inward at the waist and the bent posture would have been more extreme. The corset is long and smooth over the hips, but not as long or confining as fashionable corsets made during 1913 –14. The bottom edge runs straight around the top of the thighs, but it does not isolate the upper legs and is not closed at the center front over the pelvis in the way that many corsets were after about 1913. That straight bottom edge wasn't prevalent in corsets made in 1909 and earlier. After 1917 the hips were still smoothed but the bottom edge of a corset was not nearly as low on the thighs as before World War I. The waist became much more relaxed as the decade came to and end. The waist on this corset is still nicely defined, which places it earlier in the decade rather than later. The cut of corsets is quite complicated at the turn of the century, with many gores and bias seaming, but by 1910 there are longer, straighter pieces with fewer gores, and less boning is used than at the turn of the century. The reproduction looks very similar in cut and shape to the corset to the image from the year 1911 on the timeline.

Fashion is always in flux. Some adopt new styles early, others hold on to a beloved look after it becomes passé. It is possible that the original owner was not quickly adopting the latest looks from Paris, but ordered items from the Sears Catalog and had them shipped to her in a small town. Her clothes would have been a year or two behind Parisian trends. To allow for this type of variable I'd place this corset between the years 1910 and 1914.

Who Wore This Corset?

Who would have purchased a corset like this - and worn it until it reached this sad condition? It is impossible to know for certain the circumstances of the original owner, but we can assume that she was not wealthy. She chose a simple, functional corset, probably because that is what she could afford. A corset like this probably would have cost between $1 and $1.50. Using the Consumer Price Index, that translates to $35 in today's dollars, about the price of a simple bra and panties at Macy's or Victoria's Secret. When calculating with the Gross Domestic Product Deflator $1.50 equals $25, or the price of a basic bra and panties at Target in the United States or Marks and Spencer in the United Kingdom. The original corset is not a finely finished, expensive piece, and seems like it would be sold at a mass market emporium instead of a high end boutique.

We can guess that the corset's owner probably lived in a town or city, as a corset would probably not be worn when laboring on a farm. At the least we can say that the fashions worn with a long line corset such as this one would not be suitable to the tasks required on a farm. If she did live in a city, there is a good chance that she worked in a factory. There were many jobs where women were employed - teaching, food service, domestic help - but the majority of women worked in industry. The major industries at that time included canning, tobacco, and printing, but the largest was the textile industry, where far more women than men worked. This was an era when education was considered more important for boys than girls; when possible, boys went to school so that they could move on to a career, whereas girls worked at menial jobs until they married and started raising a family of their own.

It is possible to guess what her income might have been. In 1909 the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union started organizing massive strikes, and eventually won a pay raise, to $3 a week, and a work reduction, down to 52 hours. To put that in perspective, that would be the equivalent of $289 a week in today's dollars, or $15,496 a year. If we break it down to an hourly rate that's $5.73 an hour, 52 hours a week. No time off for vacations, no sick days, no heath care, no workers' compensation if injured on the job, no retirement package, no bathroom breaks, no air conditioning. Even if the wearer of this corset did not toil as a garment worker, it is unlikely that her wages would have been substantially higher, since women were paid much less than men no matter what the job. If she could have afforded a new corset when this one became shabby she probably would have purchased one, but it's not difficult to imagine her money going toward things with a higher priority, like food, rent, or to her family.

Why this garment was saved is also a mystery. This corset doesn't look like the treasured garment from a wedding trousseau, the kind of item that would have been passed down to the next generation. If the wearer was fortunate enough to have someone who provided her wardrobe she would probably have discarded this corset when a new one was given to her. It looks more like something she wore until she no longer could. Maybe she took a different job and needed more physical flexibility, or maybe she became pregnant. We keep garments we plan on wearing again, so the corset was set aside, but by the time the owner thought she'd wear it styles, or her figure, had changed, and this garment was not put on again. It was left for someone who knew nothing about it to find a century later, and for me to discover.

The original owners of vintage clothing were real people, with real lives, and stories we can relate to if we take the time to learn about them. In solving a puzzle like the story of this corset I learned much more than just how to make a pattern from an extant garment. I learned how someone lived. Even if I'm not 100 percent certain, I have a fair idea of some of the circumstances of the corset owner's life. And in learning about hers, I'm able to appreciate mine.

Anyone wishing to construct this corset, in this size, will need the following:

• (pdf of post edwarian corset pattern)
• 1 yard (1m) of fabric 33" (84cm) wide, less needed if wider fabric is used.
• One 9" (230mm) busk
• Twelve 9" (230mm) long, ¼" (7mm) wide flat steel bones
• Eight 16½" (420mm) long, ¼" (7mm) wide flat steel bones
• Two 10" (250mm) long, ½" (13mm) wide flat steel bones
• 1 yard (1m) of 1" (25mm) wide lace
• 9 yards (8.1m) of 2" (50mm) wide bias to trim top & bottom edges, for bone casings & garter covering
• 5 yards (4.5m) of 1" (25mm) wide (cut on grain) sturdy fabric for casings
• 1 yard (1m) of 1" (25mm) wide elastic for garters
• Four garter slides and grips
• 42 grommets, size 00
• 7 yards (6.3m) of double face satin ribbon
• One spool of thread

 

References

Abbott, Edith. Women in Industry: A study in American economic history. New York; London: Appleton and Co., 1910.
Conyngton, Mary K. Employment of women and children in selected industries. Washington: G.P.O., 1913.
Worcester, Wood F. Family budgets of typical cotton-mill workers. Washington: G.P.O., 1911.

The three reports above are part of the Harvard University Library Open Collections Program, Women Working 1800-1930. (Open Collections Program, Harvard University Library)  These are digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library and museum collections that explore women's roles in the US economy between the beginning of the nineteenth century and the Great Depression.

Summary of the Report on the Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United States. Bulletin of U.S. Labor Statistics. Whole no. 175. Washington. December 1915.

Uprising of the 20,000. The American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning. The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Williamson, Samuel H. “Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1174 to Present,” Measuring Worth, April 2010

Timeline images from Wikimedia Commons.

add