A History of Corsetry
It is Christian Dior who was reputed to have said "Without foundation there can be no fashion." Perhaps he could equally have suggested that without 'fashion' there would be no need of foundations!
For without womens' (and mens') obsession throughout history with a tiny waist and thrusting breasts - except perhaps for the flat 'tube'-like fashion of the 1920s - corsetry and bras alike would probably never have been invented.
Interestingly enough, women living in the few remaining primitive societies do not seem to have the same desperate desire for small waists and certainly do not seem to be unduly worried or self-conscious about their winging bobbling breasts in the way that our ancestors were. The Cretan women, for example, are known to have worn corsets laced-in tightly to accentuate their waists as long as 4000 years ago, although they still left their breasts free to sway and bounce.
As far as is known, the first serious attempt made by women to control the movement of their breasts and to enhance their shape was around 450 BC, when a crude type of bra was fashioned out of soft leather.
Probably the most bizarre corset ever devised was a hinged iron contraption invented around 1600 AD as a result of Catherine de Medici, the wife of Henry II of France, deciding that the ideal measurement for a woman's waist was 13 inches!!! This resulted in women allowing themselves to be bolted into suitably shaped iron cages - a habit that persisted well into the 17th century.
How they not only bore the pain of being gradually but relentlessly bolted into these corsets, but also put up with the continuing discomfort throughout the day defies imagination. These painfully small waists were further exaggerated later in the century by underpinning their full skirts with hoops and panniers.
Related categories: Crossdressing Desires, Boned and Laced Corsets and Clinchers, Haute Couture Corsets
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