I think Victorian corsets are in fact still conical stays

Technically. At least some of them.

This is, sort of, a follow up on my last post, and sort of a follow up on an older one that preceded it. A while ago I posted about this 1840s corset from the Met Museum, and how, when I broke it down to pattern pieces and looked at the grainlines, it reminded me of J.S. Bernhardt's Fig. F pattern.

Corset, American or European, 1839-1841, silk. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ID: C.I.38.23.10b-d

Well, now that I've looked at Bernhardt's book and not just Sabine's Short Stays Studies...

Nevermind Fig. F; look at Fig. B!

It has exactly the vertical seaming over the bust that certain mid-19th century corsets like the one above do. Also, hip gusset in the back.

Compare Fig. B to my rough draft of the Met corset:

 

Divide the back pieces of Fig. B differently - cut at the "i" hip gusset slit that's closer to the front and incorporate the gusset itself into the back piece (notice that that particular spot lies around the underarm line both in Bernhardt's draft and mine!) - and change the remaining tabs into a large hip-hugging gusset; raise it over the bust a bit... You've got yourself a mid-19th century corset!

Of course the pattern pieces are tilted slightly differently in my rough draft, because I wasn't drafting it on a conical plane. And in fact, I think the grainlines are the main difference between Bernhardt and the later corset - Bernhardt, or at least Sabine according to him, lays it out with the centre back on the grain and everything else fanning out from there, with the centre front almost on true bias. The 1840s corset also has the centre back on grain, but the tilt of centre front is more akin to its tilt on the draft itself, as if you left the draft as is and just rotated the back pieces so that they are on grain... 

On the other hand, though, if we consider Bernhardt-style stays as a precursor, it suddenly makes a lot of sense why a lot of Victorian corsets cut the side pieces tilted, on bias! Which otherwise comes rather out of nowhere if you're instead looking at them as a direct descendant of straight-cut Regency stays.

Fairly randomly chosen 1878 US corset patent from haabet.dk

All in all, it's fairly clear to me that if I started out with a conical block a la Bernhardt, it would actually be way easier to get exactly the results I need for this particular style - I would have far less counter-intuitive places to do subtracting of empty spaces in. The conical draft already wraps around the body the way you want it to and accounts for its non-rectangular nature; you just cut it up into sections where you need to and take it in so that it really hugs the body and supports the bust. Does that make sense?

Like so:

 

It's a quick and dirty draft and I forgot a couple things, like taking it in in the back. But you get the idea. One day I'll do it properly; it's pretty clear to me now that I will have to. :D

A teeny tiny detail, but even the fact the hip gusset is cut on bias now falls into place for me - it seems many late 18th century stays cut them that way.

Ergo: Victorian corsets are still conical stays!

But that's not all! There's another fun image to support my working theory!

The working theory is that professional staymakers continued cutting things the way they knew, and just kept gradually updating the styles. That the straight-cut gussetted columnal stays we think of as Regency stays, that we think of as the direct precursor to Victorian corsets, are, in fact... well, not an evolutionary dead end, I think they may well have contributed something. But it seems to me it makes a lot more sense if they contributed less than we think. I think that the picture will be more complete if we think of it as Victorian corsets having at least two ancestors, not just one. That all the experimentation of the long Regency era resulted in the subsequent designs picking up features from all over the place.

Which brings me to the aforementioned another image. This is a detail from a satirical print from 1823:

"Painting"´, William Heath, 1823. Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Well, if that doesn't look a lot like what we consider to be 1790s transitional stays. In the 1820s! (And the picture can't be much older than its publishing date, what with her hairstyle, puffy chemise sleeves, and the dress to the left of her that I cut out from my selective image.)

I see two not immediately striking but I think very important differences in the image, compared to "transitional stays" like these:

Corset, 18th century, Met Museum, ID: C.I.41.94

One, the pronounced curve of her busk - really quite similar to the 1840s corset, especially in how it curves over the stomach instead of the more or less straight belly line of 18th century stays.

Two, the fact the bust cups do not look gathered but smooth.

Somewhat like these:

Corset/stays, dated to 1820s-1840s, Glasgow Museums, ID: E.1948.31.a

 I am currently aware of three 19th century corsets / stays with smooth cups of this sort - the Glasgow example above stands out among them by having seamed cups (really they seem quite similar to a modern bra), likely to accommodate a larger bust. Three still isn't much, but it already is more than the one I knew of years ago, and goes to show that this was, in fact, a Thing. The third one is in the Czech National Museum, was featured in Stays, or a Corset?, and unfortunately has no online presence that I know of. It also has fully corded cups, in a diagonal pattern that I am tempted to say I am seeing in the Heath print, but I think what's actually happening in the print is simply shading.

The three extants are all, more or less, stays of the columnal style, so seeing it done on the conical plane in this picture is super-interesting. And it supports my theory that there was a lot of experimentation and variety going on in the first half of the 19th century, the styles were by no means set in stone, and they did not necessarily conform to our modern ideas of what was happening when.

A pattern for the stays in the print could basically be achieved by combining Bernhardt's Fig. B/Fig. D with the bust cutouts of his Fig. C - although, based on comparison to the pattern draft of the stays from the Czech National Museum, you should probably make the cutouts a bit narrower and deeper - there needs to be a busk in the centre front going all the way up, and since there are bust cups in the cutouts, the bottom should likely reach the bottom of the gusset slit:

So, yeah. This patchwork of styles apparently existed. Or at least likely existed - we still have to keep in mind it's a satirical print. But since the stays don't seem to be being satirised and therefore don't seem overly exaggerated, and they show quite a lot of detail that actually makes sense in the larger context of early 19th century corsetry, I think the likelihood of them being a complete fabrication is low. Tabs in 1823 are a bit surprising, but the bust cups are not, and thirteen years earlier Bernhardt did include tabbed drafts in his book and apparently said one could and should mix and match according to taste. So... there definitely is more to corsetry of the first half of the 19th century than we used to think.

It makes a lot of sense to me that, as there began to be more emphasis on the natural waistline again, at least some staymakers simply returned to cutting stays the way that worked for that. They just added the experience gained from Regency styles to it - such as a greater reliance just on the cut of the fabric for bust support, as opposed to fully boning the stays and/or packing them with strength layers. And using gussets in more places than just the back hip.

Throughout the long Regency period there had been old-fashioned ladies who still preferred the old smooth cut of stays over the bust gussets (Bernhardt also mentions as much in 1810). And people in more remote, rural areas had not made the switch so swiftly - sometimes never. (Czech folklore collectors noted / recorded that fashions could take up to about twenty or twenty-five years - basically a generation - to filter down to regional dress more remote from urban centres at that point in history, and that's just talking about the elements of fashion that did filter down into it.)

The period of raised waistlines was not so long that all the old staymakers would have died out and taken their knowledge to the grave. It's not a breach and a complete change, it's a gradual evolution.

It actually possibly continues all the way to the Edwardian era, when we once again get an openly conical design with the "Corset Radical" that I did a Deciphering post on years ago:

Corset "Radical", Federer & Piesen, Prague, c. 1905. The Museum of Decorative Arts Prague, ID: 104484

One of the joys of my nerdy existence is that someone has actually made a corset like that since then!

Again, US patent from haabet.dk

Now that I have the idea of a basic conical block to compare it to, this design makes even more sense. I wonder how exactly A. P. McGraw (or Federer & Piesen?) arrived at it? Even if it was not through a conical block, I think my ideas of creating one could easily be applied to it...

More on those ideas later, I hope.

Why I have not made the Bernhardt stays (yet). Also, J.S. Bernhardt is awesome and it is not stressed enough.

It's not for lack of trying. (Well, to a degree it is, but that has more to do with the past three years plus having been... A Thing.)

I wanted to make a variation on Fig. F - I did mention that some time ago.

 

But I just couldn't make the scaled pattern work for me. The operative words being "for me". They're great designs that clearly do the job and they explained a whole load of things to me - J.S. Bernhardt left an amazing legacy for people interested in Regency costuming (here's the original scan). But his gridded scaling method leaves a few things to be desired.

Funnily enough, the answer as to why does, I think, lay directly in Bernhardt's text.

"Such a body (i.e. "well-grown") has to have... the thickness and length proportional." (p. 43; 47 in the scan)

That, dear readers, is where it falls apart for me.

Not only is my torso proportionally longer, it turns out my back is probably comparatively narrower than my front. With Bernhardt's "measure the back and derive a square grid from it" scaling method, I ended up with a pattern that was a whopping 8 cm too short for me.

Trying to alter an essentially conical-shaped pattern by that amount of length is... frustrating.

I had to figure out where to do it, first. And I realised it needed to be done at both bust and above-waist level.

I might have been able to make it work, don't get me wrong. I got started. I just have too many other things to do, so it never got finished. At one point I managed to align my cutting lines wrong on my additional strip of paper, and there were too many curves to be trued over a pretty large distance and, well, there is such a thing as "more trouble than it's worth".

The good news?

Bernhardt may have provided us with a neat gridded sizing method, but it isn't the only thing he provided us with. He also shows how you can take a basic conical block and turn it into his stays designs.

So what I'm actually going to do is make a basic conical block for myself, and turn it into his stays design.

It turns out that drafting a basic block and messing about on paper is actually a perfectly historically accurate way to design Regency women's clothes.

Oh, by the way?

The book doesn't just feature stays patterns. J.S. Bernhardt is AWESOME.

(I've already cleared this image up because LOOK AT THAT MOTHERLOAD OF REGENCY AWESOMENESS.)

 

SLEEEEVES

 

ANOTHER SLEEVE! SKIRTS!

(Oh, and there's Part 2. With adjustments for posture, men's blocks, and stockings.)

I still need to properly read his text and see if he left any other pointers. Reading German in fraktur isn't the easiest thing for me to do; I can figure it out (with the help of online dictionaries), but it's slow going that tires me out quickly. So far I've learnt that I should start at centre front and draw the curves as they are on the body, according to sight, which... isn't particularly helpful.

(I mean, I do understand to a degree. I have successfully drafted a basic block for my grandma, long distance, applying the time-honoured method of eyeballing to some of the curves. The problem is that it's much easier to do that with the curve of a rounded back, which you can see clearly in a side view of the person, than it is to do it with the curve of a pattern piece wrapping around the body horizontally.)

No matter:

There's the arc method described in Patterns of Fashion 5, which right away takes into account torso length and different measurements for front and back. Which, phew.

There's Mariah Pattie's method.

I tried combining the two in 1:5 scale, and it seems theory does translate into practice thus far. I used two different radiuses for front and back. (Ignore the messy lines and unclear style, this is just doodling to see if theory translates into practice, and the 1:5 scale kind of messed with my numbers here and there.)

And then there's the... phenomenon... I came across when drafting my sister's folk costume bodice using a variation on Bilikis' (Nigerian) bodice drafting method.

I suspect my final method will be some sort of amalgam. I have an idea how I could combine the arc method and the... phenomenon... for an easy creation of curves.

Bilikis' method of aplying various lines for various vertical points on the body and differentiating underarm and full bust/chest definitely was another of the missing links that made me go "oh, of course!" I think basically the winning combination is doing that but on a curve.

(Mariah Pattie's method looks great and simple, but I have my suspicions regarding possibly too unrealistically large radiuses for some people. Generally, it doesn't look particularly friendly to small sewing spaces; until recently, I didn't have a good large drafting / cutting table myself. Also, in her basic method she has the same curve for front and back, and that's not what I'm seeing in Bernhardt's draft. But if it works for you, more power to you!)

It's funny, because this burst of Regency inspiration actually came about from my pondering of 1780s stays and possible local folk costume variations thereof. It turns out the local harvest festival in September (more or less a harvest festival) references the elevation of my current hometown to town status in 1788. Which gives me the perfect excuse to finally make the jacket-and-petticoat ensemble I've been dreaming of since 2015 (although it won't be happening in such fancy fabrics). No promises as to when - I have bad track record in that regard - but it's definitely going to happen. I have a printed cotton with personal significance that is waiting to become some variation on the Amalia jacket. I hope I can get a collar out of it, too.

#CoBloWriMo 21: UFOs

That is, for those unfamiliar with this online sewing jargon, UnFinished Objects.

I have a lot of those. Some aren't here with me.

Some are. So here's a selection of my unfinished object, to take a stock of the making before it's done, fingers crossed.

Or not. The purplish "modern" spencer never got finished.

It's all the fault of my enthusiastic unresearched patternmaking; I'm now too bothered by the fact I put the deep-inset armscye in the front as well as the back.

Not good for the period, and bothering me in this modern-constructed garment as well.

It's a pretty good fit, though (although it could no longer fit with a button overlap), so it's a bit of a mock-up. A starting point.

* * *

In further bathroom photo adventures: Mock-up Nr. 2 of the Utrecht wrap stays.

Way better than mock-up Nr. 1, which I'm soooo not going to show you, because it didn't fit at all. That was how I found out that only one bust gusset for a DD cup was a bad idea. That volume needs to be distributed more evenly, without all the strain being focused on one point. And it plays havoc on grainlines, so I ended up with a lot of wrinkling and buckling etc.

It's still not completely good. I'm thinking of slanting the inside gussets, or moving them closer to centre front, because there's still some odd wrinkling happening there that I think could be taken care of with a change of grainlines. And I think I need to play with the slant / attachment of the side-front and straps, too, because there's fabric excess there.

Also wondering now if I should try cutting the front on the bias, like in the Bernhardt diagrams. Namely, the diagram C - the basic shape is very similar to it, after all. Maybe that would take care of the problems I'm having, too; so I might start with that.

* * *

Also in the realm of underwear, conical stays teetering somewhere on the edge between late 1780s/1790s, and a folk costume bodice (Central Bohemia, specifically).

I am more and more drawn to earlier transitional styles, so I sort of set out to experiment with it from inside out, cheating by machine of the inside layers. Considering how long it took me to finish my Regency stays, by the time I'm finished with these, I might even really be ready to move into the era!

The fabric I'm covering it with is probably more late 17th than late 18th century, I'm afraid. Let's pretend it's a re-use.

* * *

Also in-progress: a shortgown.

I didn't get beyond sewing two rectangular pieces together to create the skirt portion, and pleating the cetre back. Which, in retrospect, was probably a wrong order of things?

It's a quilting cotton that's not-entirely-correct-but-good-enough.

I've found an extant original that's a good example of what I have in mind, so I have something more solid to go on now. Although now I look more closely at it, I realise the skirt is cut together with the bodice. So it won't be entirely the same anyway. :P

* * *

This cutting layout is actually something I'm already wearing. I think the skirt in question needs to have its pocket openings taped, though, something I forgot to do...

Note: that's not flowered fabric, that's flowered tissue paper. Something was wrapped in it once, I think. Now it's become a pattern. A 1915 pattern (although adapted for my modern uses, with the introduction of side seams.)

* * *

Also in the works: another pair of Moravian-Wallachian socks, this time actually in wool.

(That's an old photo. I'm further ahead now.)

* * *

There are more things in progress. Too many. And more ideas of what to make. Still, I think it's overall a lot better than this time last year, with things I have actually finished (though not yet posted about), with a lot of the ideas with much more concrete outlines, and with some concrete ideas for some fabrics that had been lingering in the stash for years.

Deciphering historical clothes: Czech supportive (under)garments - Now edited with more info!

I've found it!

What did I find, you ask?

Why, Czech Regency/Romantic era soft/corded stays!

It's a big thing, really. Every single Czech book on historical clothing I've ever read just repeated that no corsets were worn in the Empire/Regency era, in a manner that suggests "no supportive undergarments were worn because all women suddenly went carefree and racy", which, after just a little careful examination of the portraits of the era, is obviously incorrect. But I'm not quite so surprised any more, because scouring esbirky.cz yielded very little by way of corsets and stays as such, and even what I've seen of the Central Records of Collections so far shows little (Centrální evidence sbírek, ces.mkcr.cz - a wonderful source, but built so that it's difficult to search for pictures and pretty impossible to link back to individual pages).

But I've found a local example at last! And a very pretty, embroidered example at that, though the quality of the photo leaves a lot to be desired.

Tellingly, the museum calls it a "bodice" - they have no idea what it really is (EDIT: They did not when it was labelled - sorry about the wording, see comments). I wonder if there are more misattributed Regency stays floating around in Czech museums after all? It's like Czech collective memory forgot these were supportive undergarments somewhere along the way, and when historians finally started collecting old garments, they didn't really know what they had on their hands.

"bodice, white, embroidered, with straps, plain weave" in the collections of Hornické muzeum Příbram, ID: H/Et708

Things to note: It says the fabric is "plátno", i.e. plain weave. Quite wide straps, not adjustable, but apparently sewn in only after the top edge was bound (or maybe attached in the process of binding? How I wish I could see more of it.) They also seem to be somewhat slanted, suggesting a later date with a more sloping shoulder neckline? And no busk - instead, there are four narrow bones in the front, most of which seem to have broken out or have been removed at a later date. There's a stitching line next to the boning that might be cording, and I think there's cording in the wavy stalk in the bottom embroidery, but otherwise it seems a very soft construction. The hip gussets are sewn in in what seems a thorough, sturdy manner, with two lines of stitching - it might even be flat-felled seams. And the tips of the bust gussests are strengthened with stitching, probably a buttonhole stitch. There are rows of stitching next to the bust gussets, which I think might be bones (sharp ends, so most likely not cording)? And I think there is, or used to be, a drawstring in the top edge - there seems to be some gathering there.

EDIT: The curator has more details:
"- outer fabric is twill (may be cotton) and lining plain weave (linen)
- straps are re-sewn in the front so it is hard to tell how they work originaly (whether they were adjustable) but in the back they were sewn to body and then bound
- all bones (reeds) are missing, except few fragments
- there is no cording, beside front bones or in the embroidery (it is interesting, the embroidery was done after lining was in place)
- bust gussets do have buttonhole stitch points
- in channels beside bust gussets are white baleens
- there is no drawstring nor channell on the top
About terminology: (sorry, but I was considering it for a while). I think there is nothing wrong about using label "bodice" or "živůtek". Databases should be easily searchable so we are encouraged not to use many labels. Živůtek according to Národopisná encyklopedie Čech a Moravy is "part of woman's dress worn over shift on upper half of body" so all items you listed fall into this category. English "bodice" has mostly the same meaning - period dictionaries describe stay as "kind of bodice" etc."


(Some of this refers to what I wrote below - I'm leaving that text as is for reference.)

Thank you very, very much!

Here's a colour-coded version of my original estimate (I'll replace it with an updated version later):

Gussets
Boning seams
Cording seams
I can't make out the rest of the embroidery properly for outlining - a safer bet would be just to look at the photo and draw out something similar.

The overall style of it points towards a later date, I think - who knows, it might be as late as 1840s, although I'm inclined to think 1820s or thereabouts (no waist shaping yet).

The single, relatively narrow bust gussets suggest to me that this was worn by a lady with a smaller cup size - the shape puts me in mind of my mom, who's the only A- or B-cup in this family, although otherwise sporting a curvy womanly figure with wide hips. I rather like the thought that this was worn by a woman of a similar figure as a Czech woman I know nowadays. :-)

I've never worked with Laughing Moon's Regency Corset pattern myself, but from what I've seen of it online, it seems it could be a really good starting point for recreating this garment, if you were so inclined.

* * *

There is a number of other bodices and stays and corselets in the Příbram collections, and one thing that looks like a swiss waist. There's a lot of bodices that are very clearly folk costume bodices, i.e. meant to be worn on the outside (with embroidery and golden trim and stuff) -  they resemble 1790s stays, as Central Bohemian bodices do, but the fabrics and trim used set them apart. Another tell is the decorative, non-functional "lacing" in the back of many of them.

In the translated descriptions below, I use "corset bodice" for the Czech term "šněrovačka", which, loosely translated, means "laced bodice", but can be used for a whole range of garments from a full-blown waist-reducing corset, through stuff that would probably be called "girdle" in English, to a folk costume bodice. It's my preferred term for Regency stays in Czech, too, by virtue of being fairly all-encompassing and traditional. By virtue of being all-encompassing, the museum descriptions apply it to nearly everything. Except the above. Something tells me that whoever labelled the collection lived under the impression that a "šněrovačka" or corset had to lace in the front, and if it didn't, it had to be a bodice: see also my comment at the end of this post.

"corset bodice, red, silver embroidery, appliqéd trim, with straps, plain weave, leather, metal trim, boning (baleen?), velvet" in the collections of Hornické muzeum Příbram, ID: H/Et706

There are two other garments that throw my knowledge into confusion, and hopefully ultimately forward by that: two garments with the overall approximate shape of 1790s/early 1800s stays, with bust gussets, but they are black-coloured, and one has a silk outer and the other the non-functional lacing in the back. And - this is notable - what appears to be metal grommets (although it's a bit hard to tell with the quality of the photos). They both, however, have the eyelets spaced for spiral-lacing. Are they actual 1790s stays that were later re-used as folk costume bodices, and had their eyelets strengthened with the addition of grommets? Are they 1790s-style stays worn much later than 1790s? Were they folk-costume bodices right from the start, but employing a style not normally found in them (= bust gussets)?

"corset bodice, black, white lining, with straps, cotton, silk, boning" in the collections of Hornické muzeum Příbram, ID: H/Et662

"corset bodice, black, with straps, zig-zag (mock lacing?) in the back, cotton, boning" in the collections of Hornické muzeum Příbram, ID: H/Et709

(The whole collection is awesome. There's also a cap - an actual soft "fashionable" cap with frills and stuff, not a folk costume bonnet, also not something I see often in Czech collections. And what appears to be a "miser's purse" - another Czech first for me! And many other things. Annoyingly, none of it has any dates ascribed. And whoever labeled those things really had no clue about corsetry - there's a corset with a metal busk closure, and it says it goes in the back! It's photographed with the busk in front, as if whoever photographed it had a much better idea than whoever labelled it.)

HSM '15 #1: Foundations - Teeny bumpad + a glimpse of something else

Happy new year, everyone!

For 2015, the Historical Sew Fortnightly has transformed into the Historical Sew Monthly, which was meant as a relief to the Dreamstress, but I think it's really a relief to practically everyone. It's definitely a relief to me - I will have a busy year ahead and I never managed much for the Fortnightly... whereas a month is a longer time to squeeze some little making in here and there, hopefully even when you're busy.

January, at the beginning, is a bit easier on me still, so I'm actually managing to do more. Maybe it's a buffer against future lapsed challenges (I'm especially not sure about April and May, also because I'm not quite sure what I want to make for those challenges).

So the first thing I made was a teeny bumpad. It's something I may need for my beloved 1790s-Regency era, and it's something I may need when I finally get around to making the 1848 costume (I do have ideas for making most of it usable in a modern context, for the record).

(That's our Christmas tablecloth there, before it was thrown into the laundry.)

It's a stashbusting project. The fabric used to be a child's duvet cover that was passed to my family years ago with the idea we may use it for sewing. The colours are so garish that I've only used it for muslining so far. They're so garish that I decided to use the wrong side at the last moment, which is why there are pencil lines on the bumpad...

It's filled with tiny scraps I've been hoarding for stuffing things with. I have a big bag filled with them and this used up only a tiny portion of that, but it's a start. :D
They're cut into thin strips, about 1 cm wide - that way, they stuff in more easily and evenly, without so many bumps. I stuffed it not too tightly, just tightly enough to give it a firm shape, but with some give for it to bend a bit - because I want to use it both at the waist and at the underbust.

I made the pattern using an aluminum foil contraption (really, just tightly rolled up layers of it) that was meant to approximate a flexible ruler for taking curves off the body. (I don't remember anymore where I learned this trick, but it's not my own idea.) It's not as stiff as a flexible ruler probably would be, at least with the amount of layers I've used, so there's still some guesswork involved; but it's quite a bit of help.

Shiny!

And that's your glimpse of something else underneath.

One of the most annoying things about sewing is when you find out the trim you wanted use just so isn't enough.

So I'll have to dig up something else or resign myself to plain hem. But that's all a matter for another post. Back to topic.

Just the facts, ma'am:

The Challenge: HSM #1 Foundations
Fabric: striped printed cotton
Pattern: drafted by me
Year: cca late 18th century to mid-19th century
Notions: white cotton thread, scraps for filling (I'm probably still going to attach a tape to it, too)
How historically accurate is it? Plausible, I suppose, but the materials are dubious and it's partly machine-sewn.
Hours to complete: 1-1,5? Plus making the pattern. The stuffing takes probably the longest.
First worn: not yet
Total cost: Minimal. All stash; the fabric used is just a cca 50 x 20 cm strip. Cost of filling depends on what you decide to use...