Let me open your mind!

If you want to make a professional corset, it's got to be coutil. And since baleen [whalebone] went out, it's got to be boned with steel. Right?

Weeeell, not exactly. You'd be surprised what you find out when you look at real nineteenth century corsets, which is exactly what I did on Friday.

I'm lucky enough to live within an hour of the Symington Collection's archive. I made an appointment to go and see real corsets up close, meaning that I spent six hours snapping photos furiously as the enormously helpful Cali just kept bringing me more and more armfuls of big blue archive boxes.

And when I opened those boxes with my little cotton gloves on [to protect the corsets from the oils on my skin], what did I see?


All photos in this post are (c) Leicestershire County Council: The Symington Collection
Click to enlarge


Inside the top edge, showing the flossing

And look what it's boned with...



Cane? Yeah. And it's still gorgeous, and it still worked.

It's obvious when you think about it. Corsets have always been complex garments, but there was a time when everyone needed one, so we are by no means the first to try to find ways of making them economically. Symington's spent a lot of energy trying to make "affordable" corsets and they clearly succeeded both by being resourceful with materials and also by refining the processes by which corsets were made.

The "cane" corsets were actually made with a type of reed, and the finished garment was laced onto a hollow copper form that had steam forced through it, moulding the reeds (and thus the corset) into a shape that this example still holds today.

Now, Symingtons were mass-producing, which still makes what we do expensive in comparison, but if you've been tearing your hair out trying to find ways of reducing your prices to accommodate everyone (or yourself!) then you're not alone. If Symington's had had access to cable ties, they would undoubtedly have used them.

Another example:


All photos in this post are (c) Leicestershire County Council: The Symington Collection
Click to enlarge







This one's a little dearer - some whalebone, some cording, and lots of cane. And just to make us all feel a little better about the fiddly bits... the points of their gussets were a bit ropey too.




And what about the coutil? You're going to have to take my word for it on this one because I don't have photos, but my good friend Jema showed me an original corset in her collection last week, and we both marvelled at the fabric. It was like cotton sheeting, so light and translucent, and one layer only! The difference, however, was that it was very densely woven fabric indeed, very strong and with no stretch whatsoever.

That's the key: it's got to be strong, non-stretch and densely woven. Coutil checks all those boxes, but that doesn't mean that it's the only thing that's any use for making an outstanding corset. Nor is steel the ONLY thing that can bone a serviceable, economically priced corset. So go, experiment. There is no rule that can't be tested and broken.