All posts tagged: 1903 corset

More of Madge’s monkey business

Published by The Dreamstress

Remember last week’s post about Madge and her 17th century dress in the contemporary setting of 1932’s White Zombie?  Well, in my search for images, I also found this picture of Madge: Wowzers!  Va Va Voom!  Those are some curves! Now compare it to another, more characteristic, image of Madge: Yeah…  Something havey cavey is going on there.  There is some serious padding and sculpture going on in the first photo. This fits in perfectly with my post on the 1903 corset, and Lauren’s comment on all the padding in the Truly Victorian pattern. It takes a lot of engineering to go from ’20s sylph to Camille Clifford’s rival!

Every rose has its thorns

Published by The Dreamstress

Remember my briar rose corset?  That thing is evil.  Well, technically it is  evil #2 (evil #1, of course, being pintucks) I kinda knew from the start that making a straight fronted corset would be heinous.  I mean, just look at the advertisements for the things: How do you even make the human form look anything remotely close to that!?!  Not easily, that’s for sure! But I tried my best.  I draped my pattern on Isabelle, following Waugh’s pattern from a real corset, which must have fit someone at some point. Then I fitted it, or tried to.  It’s really hard to fit an anatomically improbable waist cinching corset on a natural figure.  I ended up doing about 6 fittings, and going through that many redrafts of the pattern.  The best luck I had with the fittings was fitting it over my nougat corset (which at least achieved some waist-cinching for me). I didn’t take any pictures of the fittings because by the time I got the mock-up on and pinned I was so grumpy …