Corsets In The 19th Century

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Shape and Image: The body, its construction and representation through fashion.

The topic that I have chosen for my essay is Shape and Image: The body, its construction and representation through fashion. Throughout the essay I will be writing about the comparison between the past and the present of corsets from the 19th century to present, Have celebrities in the present taken the shaping of the body too far, Is the change of shape for a woman's body defined as beauty. I have gathered information throughout different variety of sources such as; websites, archives and using the library resources.

A woman in a corset is a lie, a fiction, but for us this fiction is better than reality. …show more content…

The term corset only came to use within the 19th century, before this time the garment was more known as a pair of bodies or a stiff bodice through-out the 18th century. The corset was a lot more popular for women then to wear as it was the new garment for women to wear under their gowns . The corset was pulled to a firm grip to make sure it was closed on the back which created a tight waist and then the gown would sit on top which would be bigger area to flow over the women's legs to create an hourglass final figure for the woman. Gradually over the 19th century the corset also got longer and started losing the fuller bone structure. Fig 1. A corset is created of a number of things such as whalebone, wicker, steal and plastic to create the firm structure shape for the …show more content…

In the present they don't use the word corset as such it is known as a waist trainer. Fig2. The waist trainers are found online in different shapes, colours and sizes for people to purchase. The structure of a waist trainer is a lot different to the 19th corset as it is created from latex and this then flexes with your body and then this means it doesn't restrain you or cause your ribs to move position, where as corsets are creating your ribs to pull out of their natural position. A corset can end up leading your body to health problems as it is an extreme method of training your body. On the other hand waist trainers are targeting fat cells to help the body achieve curves and reduce your waist line. In Fig 3, you can see how much the body shape changes while wearing a corset and how all the insides of your body get squeezed together, which surely isn't safe. In 1909 Paul Poiret decided to ban the corset as he used his wife to model most of his garments and her figure was classed as unfashionable so he decided to stop the use of corsets and put women into garments which made the women feel free. As you can see in Fig 4, the garment has no shape to the waist as it has no corset under the garment compared to a garment which does have a

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