Corsets back

Press, 9 October 1979, Page 12

Corsets back

Bv

STELLA BRUCE

'Whenever women feel they are the equal of men, they cut their hair, flatten their chests, and throw away their corsets,” declared the celebrated fashion historian, the late James Laver. In that case, there must be an awful lot of inequality about! Women are growing their hair, developing their busts ... and, after a decade in the fashion wilderness, corsets are coming back with a bang. Millions of women threw their last roll-on into the dustbin when the miniskirt brought tights into their lives, and vowed that never again would they constrict themselves with elastic. Now, the rage for pen-cil-slim skirts is making millions of women eat their words. Stores report that corset sales are up 50 per cent on this time last, year and increasing at. the speed of light. ‘‘Obviously, the new tight fashions have a lot to do with it,” said a spokesman for one major manufacturer. “But the technical advances made over the last few years have made foundation garments much more comfortable and less restricting. “Even, girls at school are now wearing control briefs. Even two years ago it was generally thought that if you wore a corset you were over the hill. “Now women under 30 are buying control garments for occasions when they want to look and feel good.” Not surprisingly, the arch-enemies of the return of the corset are men ... they know the days of girls feeling the pinch could well be over — a tight-fitting skin of elasticated fabric will see to that!

Indeed, the only type of corset that turns the average man on is the sort beloved of chorus girls in the Edwardian music hall, which pushed the bosom up to nearly chin level at one end and had sexy black suspenders at the other ... Sadly, our liberation from whalebone and elastic didn’t last long. After only 10 years of allowing nature to give us the figure we want, a new generation of corsets, in the disguise of “bottomshapers,” “body' shapers” and “control briefs.” is continuing the tyranny which began just 400 years ago when women were first bundled up in whalebone and buckram and laced up so tightly they could hardly breathe.

But worse was to come. The Puritans squashed in

the female figure even more violently —- the “stomacher,” which pushed any surplus flesh out of sight, was actually a wooden board! Over the centuries,, a tiny waist continued to be considered an essential part of feminine beauty, which, when the rest of vou was fat, just couldn’t be achieved by natural means. So it had to be brute force! As a result, the fashionable lady of a century ago appeared content to suffer the tortures of whalebone, indiarubber and watchspring steel, fashioned

into undergarments that were hell to get on and heaven to take off. Indeed, the fashionable S-shaped corset caused a backwards curve to the spine and led to so many' pelvic disorders that doctors tried, unsuccessfully, to get it banned from the shops. Happily the new generation of corsets is very 7 different. “Corsets went out when women started taking more care of their bodies,” explains Amines Gardner, of Berlei. “But now we’re seeing the full circle. “We have a range aimed at the teen-age market and this is doing surprisingly well.”

Model girls started the new trend, according to another major manufacturer: “They all worry about their tummies and

say that the new light control briefs give them a feeling of flatness and well being.” The return of the corset has put men in something of a quandry. They are thrilled about the return of flat tummies and cheeky bottoms revealed in pencil-slim skirts. But they hate to think that their loved ones are encased in the fashion equivalent of a length of hosepipe which takes a contortionist ter put on and take off. “Anyone indulging in a bit of slap and tickle is likely to get his fingers broken,” lamented one bachelor in this thirties. “Nowadays girls are walking about in suits of armour and I don’t like it a bit.” Indeed, in a recent fashion poil, men rated corsets at the very botton of the turn-on table, followed by elastic briefs, corselettes, body-stockings and dingy white suspender belts. The top of the list, in case ydu’re interested, were see-through blouses, skimpy black bras, and (remember them?) hot pants Many men seem pretty unimpressed by the fact that a modern corset can take a couple of inches of waist and hips and turn a nondescript figure into a shapely one. It seems they can’t forget that all we’re doing is pressing all that unwanted flesh tighter together until it feels that something somewhere has got to give.