The 'most controversial garment in the history of fashion' is back
Fashion that exaggerates the hourglass figure is booming in popularity - and it's not just the Fifty Shades effect. Clare Coulson gets to the bottom of the phenomenon
The revival of the corset was one of the most surprising trends to emerge from the autumn/ winter fashion shows that wrapped up earlier this month in Paris. On a wave of Victoriana, the sculpted, body-shaping underwear had segued back into fashion. Sometimes it looked very similar to its 19th-century forerunners, complete with stiff boning. Elsewhere, it appeared in entirely fresh, modern guises, on catwalk shows ranging from Stella McCartney to Louis Vuitton.
But this is not just some arch trend in the elevated world of couture that will never survive in the less rarefied atmosphere of the high street. It’s not just designers who are rediscovering the waist; this week, reports emerged of a sudden increase in sales of corsetry.
At What Katie Did – a vintage-styled emporium that specialises in undergarments that recreate the ultra-feminine look of the Forties and Fifties – sales have increased by half over the past three months. The west London store, which also has an outpost in Los Angeles, stocks very traditional steel-boned corsets and corselettes – a garment combining a corset and bra.
Madonna, Kate Moss and Kylie Minogue are among the clientèle, as well as period television shows such as The Hour and Call The Midwife. Its website features Jessica Rabbit-shaped models wearing hourglass satin corsets in vintage pin-up poses.
Other retailers, such as eBay, also report a sudden shift, with sales of corsets at the online trader up 54 per cent since December.
Rachel Bothamley, who runs the London branch of What Katie Did, believes that the time is right for a revival in hourglass figures.
“There always seems to be a resurgence of corsets in fashion every 60 years or so,” she says. “There was a peak in 1955 after Dior’s New Look collection in 1947, which made a cinched-in waist fashionable. Before that, in the late 19th century, it was the same.”
Arguably, the media have had a hand in the latest renaissance. “There are women in the public eye who are curvaceous and are helping in bringing a waist and hips back into fashion again, much like the figures of the Fifties,” says Bothamley. “A lot of women will come into our London boutique because they have seen images online or on social media.”
Some observers believe the huge interest in Sam TaylorJohnson’s big-screen adaptation of E L James’s Fifty Shades of Grey (it could turn out to be the most profitable film of 2015, with more than £330million taken so far) might be encouraging women to experiment with a garment often viewed as erotic.
Lucy Litwack, managing director of Covent Garden’s Coco de Mer store, which counts bespoke corsetry among its erotica, agrees that the film has prompted a radical shift.
“We have always had a customer base interested in corsetry. Fifty Shades of Grey has introduced a lot of new people to the idea of using our products… and gave people the permission they needed to try them.”
Likewise, Lily James’s starring role in Cinderella, which will be released in the UK on Friday, has helped catapult the corset back into consciousness; the actress has discussed in interviews the rigours of wearing corsetry throughout the film: she was given advice on how to wear it by Helena Bonham-Carter, another serial corset-wearing actress and Cinderella co-star).
The trailer, featuring a powder blue, tightly corseted tulle gown, has provoked much debate about James’s incredibly tiny waist, further emphasised by the princessy designs of Sandy Powell, the costume designer.
The Kenneth Branagh-directed film took a staggering $132.5million (£88.6million) on its opening weekend in America.
But it is, perhaps, another unrealistic figure who is most responsible for repopularising an impossibly curvaceous figure. With her hand-span middle and famously rotund derriere, Kim Kardashian, the realitytelevision star, has been the most high-profile poster girl for womanly curves and redefining a new body ideal. Lest anyone be tempted to sniffily dismiss her influence, bear in mind that this is a woman with 30million Twitter followers, and with some of the world’s most influential fashion designers at her beck and call.
Kardashian, along with her sisters, is the most highprofile devotee of “waist training” – wearing bodyshapers or corsets regularly to permanently redefine the waist. After the rise of real, everyday and often androgynous-looking clothes over the past decade, the corset’s return has represented an arresting, surprising volteface, but then hourglass-forming underwear has always caused debate. In her book The Corset: A Cultural History, Valerie Steele, a fashion theorist, describes it as “probably the most controversial garment in the entire history of fashion”.
“Corsets were around without any interruption for 600 years until a brief attack on them in the 1850s, and then again in the 1910s, with Paul Poiret [a famous French designer who liberated women from corsets]. So they’ve been around for ever, but they haven’t always been about giving women a little waist,” says Judith Watt, fashion historian and course leader in fashion journalism at Central St Martins.
“They’ve always distorted the body, but corsets as we know them now are something that actually makes your waist smaller and lifts your breasts up to give you fabulous décolleté.”
However, we cannot presume that this latest incarnation – in the fashion world at least – means a return to all-out sexiness. The designers who are reviving corsetry details are presenting them in thoroughly modern ways. And, it should be noted, much of this 21st-century shapewear is being created by female designers.
For next autumn/winter, Stella McCartney has topped sheer, blush silk blouses with neat bodices, and created sleek cocktail dresses and tops using classic corseted silhouettes.
Mary Katrantzou included moulded black damask corsets in her recent collection – smooth and seamless, thanks to the technical know-how of both a prosthetics expert and a milliner – teamwork that could only originate in the fashion world.
Sarah Burton – a long-time collaborator of Alexander McQueen and now creative director – softened up the harsh aesthetic of the house with feminine satin corsets.
At Givenchy, Riccardo Tisci created a romantic ode to Victoriana with boned corsetry that cinched jackets and coats in black damask or velvet, and topped heavily beaded dresses. Meanwhile, at Louis Vuitton, Nicolas Ghesquière added corsetry details to black satin slip dresses.
“There was definitely a renewed interest in the waist this season, and an assuredly feminine silhouette that felt quite femme fatale,” says Natalie Kingham, the head of buying at matchesfashion.com, who has just returned from the final leg of autumn/winter shows in Paris.
“Many designers referenced female icons, including Marilyn Monroe and Lauren Bacall. At McQueen, Sarah Burton said in her notes she had been watching the [Victorianbased and visually sumptous] TV series Penny
Dreadful, starring Eva Green, so it does feel like the rise in popularity again for period dramas might be influencing this mood.”
Green herself has said she believes corsets are both “classy” and “sexy”.
Whatever the inspiration, the corset can still be relied upon to inspire debate. For Phoebe Philo, fashion’s leading feminist, whose collections at Céline rarely deviate from rigorous minimalist designs, the incorporation of lingerie details in pale apricot satin and padded, corseted coats in her latest collection was a radical move, approached with baby steps.
“I feel like I’m always on guard for women not to be sexualised,” the designer said backstage after her show.
“I’m just trying to work out glamour that I find intriguing.
“There are lots of questions – the whole process was very questioning. It’s a question of looking at things and asking, ‘When is that too much, and when is it not enough? Is that womanly or girly?’”
The corset may be back – but it’s as political as ever.
I'm always on guard for women not to be sexualised but I look for intriguing glamour