Article originally posted on Foundations Revealed September 2015. Photos forthcoming
What if a Victorian corsetière had access to today’s tools and materials? What if a 21st-century corset-maker were faithful to yesterday’s techniques and craftsmanship? To answer that question, I made a corset: a small-herringbone-weave gray blue coutil with black French lace, fashioned in the spirit of a W.H.K & S “Catharine Hayes” original over a hundred years old, informed by Luca Costigliolo’s class at the School of Historical Dress in London, but designed and made in 2015 at my workshop in downtown San Jose, California.
Figure 1. Original corset from front, side, and back.
Continue reading The Century Corset Challenge: a Neo-Victorian Reproduction