Another factor in survivorship bias, is that it's much easier to reuse a large dress to remake into a smaller size than the reverse. You can totally take your plus size cousin's debutante ball gown and remake it for your size 10 self and have spare fabric to alter the style slightly. Meanwhile your size 4 cousin's dress is too nice to make into aprons or children's clothes, we'll just keep it in storage a bit longer in case.
I was thinking about my first communion dress. I received it when I was 8 years old, 30 years ago, and I was then on the smaller side. Nowadays, in my country, catholic children usually receive their first communion around 10: my old dress doesn't fit my 10 year old nieces and close relatives. But, it's a very special, very high quality gown (Swiss organdy, hand made by my mom), so I will keep it storaged, even if it was only worn once and will be probably never worn again.
@@limecilla7612 You're hitting upon another version of survival bias that I don't see other people talking about: sentiment. I've long wondered how many of those tiny, very beautifully wrought corsets were part of a wedding ensemble, and were kept for sentimental value even if hardly ever worn afterward, because the woman soon had children and was never able to lace down that far again. I do have one dress, myself, that I have kept for decades, and it's the last one that my grandmother made for me. It's nothing fancy, but gramma made it, and it's still a style I would consider wearing today.
What? That's a thing? Why would you want to make your chest look bigger?? 🥴 Maybe it's just me very likely being nonbinary (not sure if I am yet or not) but I wish my chest were smaller, if not just completely non-existent. And it's honestly pretty tiny to begin with 😂 and yet I still want it goneee.
@@_veronica_r Apparently! I had a kid down the street ask if I stuffed my bra when I was 12 (I was already a DD 😭) meanwhile, my mom would only let me get minimizer bras.
Museum bias is totally a thing too. Museums make a choice of what to keep and what to display as well. A very worn plus sized jacket isn't as displayable as a very good condition but tiny dress.
Conservation bias: the garments that are the most preserved are the ones least worn, which of course means that the proportion of the styles that survived is pretty much inverse to what was actually most commonly worn in the period.
P.S. I love looking at garments in smaller regional museums, if they have online collections or put on exhibitions I can attend etc., because it's often a MUCH better look into the clothes of an era than carefully curated fashion exhibitions put on by big name museums that focus just as much on the aesthetics as they do the content. 😉
Also what we mostly see in the museum are garments that belonged to rich people who could afford to throw gown in the box instead of altering it for next teenage girl in the family. So we're talking dresses that belonged to people who could employ every trick in the book to look best. And in case of "special ocasions" gowns, where dicomfort can be put aiside for two hours and vanity hits it's peak, we can expect that some people could opt for more reduction and more padding which gives effect of those riddiculous proportions in most beautiful museum pieces. Working class people tend to prefer more practical and comfortable clothing and tend to have less squishy core (so no tight lacing). Their clothing would be more representative of how people looked in the past size-wise, but they just don't look good enough for display :(
It's probably worth mentioning (for completeness) that all the pencil sketches and paintings are what the artist wanted the subject to look like, not always what the subject actually looked like. A hand-made image can always have a fashionable figure!
And even today, the fashion sketches lean towards one type of physique. So historically we may look back and assume that women were extremely anorexic, tall and lacking in full busts, etc.,…well, well good thing we have other sources to push back 😅 at that however. Great video! Thanks for the reality check on true Victorian waistlines and more!
I like how you pointed out that modern actresses who've had to wear very uncomfortable versions of corsets had legitimate reasons to be uncomfortable, and that they're not just being dramatic. It's because they were done dirty by being made to tight lace to reduce their waist instead of padding up the bust and hips to make the illusion of a tiny waist, which would have been how it was done historically. A+ content as always!! Also I love your ads lmao
Also girls started wearing corsets age seven - that makes the muscles & body adapt. You can then grow up & tight lace & feel snug, not squeezed. If you suddenly try to squeeze a modern actress, with a modern actresses body (i.e. with a middle toned by workouts & no flab nor softness, and a straight figure with no natural waist to speak of) it would be hurting their rump muscles something awful!!
Not only that but there have been accounts of costume designer forced to make a couple sizes too small for the actress to make their waist to appear smaller. It like someone wear 2 sizes small shoes and it not hurting your feet and causing blisters. Improper cloth sizes will always be uncomfortable.
I mean, literally, it's such an idiotic mistake to make! And studios have so many ppl working on costumes... yet they couldn't have consulted ANY expert in history-dresses to learn about vintage push-ups aka padding & XL ruffles? Like, AGHR! 😵
@@annaagapova3583Hopefully none thought they were directly lying, but I can see the frustration at all the misconceptions being directed at them, because they're unintentionally contributing to spreading those misunderstandings, and giving corsets a bad name. I feel really bad for them, though. A movie shoot can be long. Imagine having to go around for months in the extreme condition they're describing, while having to perform, because you're at work. Seriously, Hollywood, get a grip!
So one lady I know from a sewing group went to a historical dress display and said "all the waists were so tiny, no wonder they would faint all the time" and I was so overwhelmed with how much I would need to cover in one sentence to quickly disprove that statement I just sat there with my face twitching. So thank you. I now have nice video to share instead of having an anyurism.
@@mariashaki89 well, she wasn't wrong about "those waists were tiny". Why because my grandma s wedding dress was impossible for us her grandkids to try fitting in when we were about 16, 17 ish... Because that dress was for her 13-14 ish body (at best)😢, and those were WW1 times when she had lost all her family aside from her small sister, and was marrying a 16-17 ish boy..... Not that he had much family left, a mother and two brothers... So, it s not like they were properly nourished growing up. And having spend many summer holidays at the village with them as a kid myself, she wasn't a small woman. a thin woman certainly but wasn't small, as expected from an old village lady who did nearly everything by hand back in the day, and am sure couldn't fit in her wedding dress as an adult while being thin still.
I was working as a museum volunteer and dressed in the 1870s style complete with bustle and corset. The worst disagreement I had was with a male staff member who informed me that women did have ribs removed to have smaller waists. Even after pointing out that the medical proceedings of the time would have made such a thing nearly lethal, he continued to insist it was commonly done. I told him if he could show me medical records of the time period that supported his stance I would eat my corset. I still have the corset. 😉
I read about removing ribs as a desperate measure to try and ease the breathing of patients with tuberculosis. However I don’t recall reading a lot about patients surviving that treatment.
Removing ribs for fashion (or other things, eg. the Marilyn Manson rumors) have been a perennial rumor forever, it seems. Probably specifically because of how invasive and dangerous it would be. Given all that the Victorians liked to just make up about everything, I wouldn't be surprised if they themselves started rumors about contemporary women removing ribs to get smaller waists (probably accompanied with pontification about how vain women are).
I feel like the "movies are full of bodies with limited compressible tissue" aspect has been largely overlooked in the corsets-in-media discourse to date, so THANK YOU for putting it front and center.
Yes came here to say that! I hadn’t considered this angle. And of course Hollywood is too obsessed with women being as small as possible that they wouldn’t consider the augmentation aspect of creating the shapes
Also, I can imagine the actresses, directors and everybody being averse to padding out to achieve the same aesthetic… no wonder the actresses complain about the corsets
Yes, this! I've been saying it for ages, that these actresses probably do have horrible experiences, because they are so thin and lean. When you are tightlaced by a dick director because he likes the effect, having never worn a corset, and probably not given enough time by that dick director to season you corset, that minus the knowledge of how to wear a corset well, no wonder they are miserable.
@@EH23831 Which is rather ironic in a society where surgical augmentation is considered a reasonable thing to do, if you're a female who's body is allegedly "required" to be maximally appealing.
I love how Bernadette at this point has the complete impression of a history professor giving an online lesson to their students when lounging in her office chair. Including the fact that history professors are absolutely the type of people who would climb into a pot just to make some (?) point.
Re: proportion - I am a fat person with a lot of my fat in the front part of my belly. When I wear a corset a lot of fat gets pushed to the sides which creates a more dramatic hipspring than I naturally have which makes it look like I'm cinching much tighter than I am. So even without being padded out in the bust and hips, it appears that I'm "tightlacing" when I'm really only laced just as tightly as necessary to keep the corset on. So, even if you look at a corseted body in person - no padding, no photographs - you can't tell how tightly it's laced. Only the wearer can judge if the corset is too tight.
Same! I am 42-32-44 and also kind of... wide and flat, if that makes sense? Broad shoulders and rib cage, it often bothers me how i appear to have "no waist" when looking at myself straight on in the mirror, because my curves are all fully behind or in front of me. But the slight redistribution of corsetry, with only a very negligable 2 inch reduction (which is just barely tight enough to stay on and keep my boobs from falling out) makes me look very dramatically hourglassy from the front view. I just become a LOT thicker through the waist in side view than I am when uncorseted, because my wide-and-flat shape has now become cylindrical. And most of these "how can that be real?" photos and drawings are from the front.
preach. i always tell people that if you have a fair amount of "squoosh" your results will be dramatic. A muscular and dense tissued person and a soft bodied person who start with identical measurements will get VERY different looks with the corset. i squoosh in the waist but have broad natural shoulders, and it always looked woah dramatic even just... putting a corset on fairly snug but not tight.
The most important part of this video to me was seeing the same outfit with and without supporting undergarments. I've never seen it so clearly demonstrated just how big of a difference that really makes. Thank you for your fabulous and educational content~
I remember how people freaked out about how tiny Lily James's waist looked in the Cinderella dress, and the production folks had to say very loudly and slowly, that her waist wasn't cinched down or altered with CGI, it just looked tiny because of the giant skirt and big poofy bertha.
@Emi Adachi In the special features, I'm pretty sure she says 17 inches, and could barely manage to get broth down at lunch due to the tight lacing. How much of that is studio-sponsored blather, I leave to the reader's discretion.
@@onemercilessming1342 correct: “I have naturally a quite small waist,” James told “Nightline.” “And on top of that I have a corset that was pulled me into the inch of my life." James said the corset part of the gown slimmed her down to a 17-inch waist.
Recently, while preparing a History class, I came across an extant corset worn by queen Isabella II of Spain. The interesting part is that she was wearing it the day in 1852 (she was 21) when she was attacked with a stiletto by a disgruntled priest. The corset probably saved her life when the blade struck a baleen and only made a small wound, and the garment still bears the small puncture and bloodstains. So you can add body armour to the list of functions of 19th century corsets. The piece can be seen in the webpage of the MAN (Museo Arqueológioc Nacional) if anyone is interested.
"attacked -by- with a stiletto by a disgruntled priest" 🥺 that priest must have been worse than disgruntled, risking their life like that 😅😅 Edit: see striked-through word.
@@KrissieMarieEbdane By all accounts he was a peculiar character. He had been exiled because of his liberal beliefs, then he won the lottery and became a loanshark.and the best part: his house was in a place called "Hell's Alley". Indeed he was soon executed and his body and belongings reduced to ashes.
Jill Bearup did a quick test of the protective qualities of corsets - "I TESTED Corsets vs. Knives (For Science!)". The synthetic whalebone stood up very well to slashing, but was not so effective against stabbing. I mean, it'll absorb some of the thrust, and that'll help, but it's not amazing. (And a stiletto specifically designed for stabbing, potentially even stabbing through mail armor -- so it'll be way more effective at it than the kitchen knife Jill's test used was). So there must have been more going wrong for the priest than simply hitting a bit of baleen for his attack to have been so ineffective
@@jonathan_60503 The queen was wearing a thick mantle that also contributed and the priest may have botched the stab somewhat. He was stopped before attempting a second stab.
Learning about the survivorship bias with small dresses really helps me. I love buying vintage clothing, and even clothes from the 50's, many many MANY vintage shops have these teeny tiny dresses, and while I'm an XS in modern clothes, I feel inadequate next to these tiny dresses. But knowing that oh, these are *really* the dresses that got left behind, got left unworn, *because* they were outliers, reframes it a lot. I do still want a corset, maybe even more now haha. I love snug clothes, it makes me feel secure. And realizing that women have been padding their busts for 100's of years, there really is no shame in it.
The point of a corset should be to make you feel firm insecure and make your clothes lay the way they you want them to, not to actually reduce your body. Go out and impress them all with your illusion skills🎉
Survivorship also explains the relative (seeming) lack of plus sized clothes. You can always take fabric off, but it's much more difficult and takes a more skilled hand to add in fabric. Reducing a dress downwards is usually fairly easy while making one bigger is almost unheard of (At least, any more than the natural ease of the seams!). Plus size gowns would have been EARLY on the chopping block to be cut down for more "standard size" garments, which could then themselves be cut into youth sizes. A larger size can also be reduced to a smaller size if there is damage- say a large stain, mothbite holes in a specific area, rot, etc. Those specific areas could be cut away, and the extra used to patch places that need it.
@naminova If you feel "inadequate" next to old dresses, imagine how the rest of us, who are not size XS, feel... (Which is about 99% of women, especially those out of their teens. I too was tiny back then! ;))
Survivorship bias reminds me of a 1950 dress I tried on in an antique shop. I came in hoping to make said dress my prom dress, the clerk told me it was made for "skinny people". (BTW I'm pretty average, 130, 5'6). My mom who is insanely skinny couldn't fit into it. So in conclusion, that dress only survived cause no one can fit in it!
Ha! I have a similar story. I tried on a wedding dress I found and almost got stuck in it 🤣 I was a size 4 at the time. I never thought of survivorship bias.
speaking of prom dresses, when im online vintage shopping I see a lot of very small dresses but I remember that they might have belonged to a teen, but are of course marketed as "XXS" because the majority of their potential customers are going to be adults
This reminds me of the dress “Nancy” wore in the 2005 Oliver Twist movie. The actress literally got the role because they wanted to use a vintage dress that only she was petite enough to fit into.
I was at the Smithsonian National History Museum last month with my family and my mom and aunt were freaking out about how tiny a pair of stays were that they had on display. I tried explaining that 1) those stays could have belonged to a young teenager who hadn't finished growing, 2) they wouldn't have been worn completely laced shut like they were being displayed, and 3) they probably survived in pristine condition because they were so freaking tiny and couldn't be worn by anyone else.
I remember that time when my friends and I wore kimono's in Japan. We were dressed by this incredible lady who explained to us all the history of kimono and name of different garments and layers. And the "fashionable" silhouette in kimono is looking very tubular. No thin waist, no hips, no bust, just a big cylinder. Because I am the curvier, I am the one who had to wear the most padding... to fill all the gaps and "erase" my shapes when my slimmer friends wore very little padding. Its really impressive how it can change all your body proportions to give you the good silhouette.
as an avid watcher of manga/anime since young, i was primed to think kimonos were supposed to be worn really tightly so you can see the hourglass figure. so seeing kimonos irl was kinda weird, it seemed 'wrong' ironically. even the more informal yukata had a very tubular shape
@@lakia-chan That just means you're watching/reading more mainstream anime and manga, which is usually geared to the male gaze. If you watch stuff that is meant to highlight the culture, like anything in a more traditional setting, they show the proper kimono silhouette.
I came here to say this exact thing! I’ve learned to dress kimono myself as well and I own a premade waist pad that fills out my waist and fills in on my lower back too cause of my butt lol. It comes made with a handy elastic band and hook to secure it on be comfortable haha. It’s popular to pad around the upper bust near the shoulder too. They make kimono bras with pockets to add padding where you need it even (I don’t own one of those tho.) Also apparently having a bigger head can look better when dressing kimono (esp with Japanese hair style or wig on) just cause of the kimono layers and stuff!
My grand mother, who is now 92, and my grandpa were photographers. Officially, it was HE, the artist. Because, men, sexism, 'but women have only home making skills', etc... But. In reality, he took the photos, and she did the manipulations. She'd even skin tones, touch up textures, etc. And, she'd "contour correct" silhouettes. It's funny that we forgot it now, when it was still used but a few decades ago. It's as if we assume anything before the age of the computer was not capable of such wizardry.
fuckin ay! when i was younger i was super into forensic science and i got a book from the 1980s about forensics that was written for children- and there is an entire chapter in that book about how to doctor negatives using paint in order to fake something in a photo like a ghost or something. This is information that is accessible today, you can find these books that mention it, and we just have this total cultural amnesia about it. People from the past whether its long past centuries or even the rememberable pre-digital age are much much cleverer than we today give them credit for.
My great grandfather had a photography studio. When I was very young he took my photograph and since color photography film wasn't a thing yet, he painted my portraits. (no he didn't alter the image...just added color). When I was in college I took a photography class where we did manipulation on our images. Burning in the background, placing objects over the photopaper to keep the image lighter, etc. Fun times!
My 1984 senior high school photo had to be extensively retouched because my acne was so bad. The final photo gives the illusion of flawless skin, which I certainly didn’t have.
My aunt has a black and white photo of herself which was made in a photo studio and coloured by hand. It was probably 45 years ago. She says they changed the colour of her jumper ftom red to green. I think they also smoothed her skin texture, it totally looks like a modern pic with a filter😂
My Grandmother was a 1920's flapper. She naturally had a 20" waist before she wore her corset. She explained that the corset was never to make you smaller but to create a neat line and also because it kept you warm when you wore lightweight silk. As an aside - she was 5' 1" and by her own admission had anorexia and weighed 80lbs.
@@221b-Maker-Street a lot, if not most women, wore an underbust corset in the 20s. they bridged the gap between the corset and the girdle so they often had elastic panels, closed with zips, and what we would now know as bra hooks. overbust corsets were still around but were largely marketed towards ‘stout’ women. corsetry didn’t disappear in the 20s, it simply changed its name to stay modern and marketable
@@dylancopley-dunn6326 Yes, I'm thinking particularly of flappers, though. Young girls - or very young women - usually straight up and down with more boyish figures. My grandma had a Symington side-lacer which is in a box somewhere... 😊
20” waist is insane! I’m 5’3” and weighed 85lbs in high school and my waist was 23.5” at that time. I’m just over 100lbs now after many years spent recovering from Ed, and my waist is now 25.5”. I have more of a rectangle/athletic build, though, but I still can’t even imagine 20”. That’s wild! She must’ve been an hourglass.
@@221b-Maker-Street They were called Liberty Bodices over here. A bit like an elastic panelled camisole with brushed cotton lining. It smoothed your shape, and yes, kept you warm!
The survivorship bias of smaller extant pieces makes sense when you consider that larger gowns could easily be taken in for different / changing aesthetic but smaller gowns could not. Another excellent video! ❤
Yes, but WHY does Bernadette own a 25ish gallon stock pot? Inquiring minds want to know. I seriously doubt she has ever made even 1 gallon of stock in her life. Is it a dyeing tub for full bolts of cloth?
As a person who is very squishy and hourglass shaped to start with (because I'm plus sized in a more pear shaped format)... wearing a tight laced corset is the only way I've ever been able to comfortably wear a corset. If I wear a properly fitted corset more loosely laced, it doesn't sit properly on my waist or support large skirts without them hanging off my hips. And no part of tight lacing into a corset is painful for me as long as I'm wearing good fitted garments. Sitting down is... unpleasant, because I can't bend the way most modern chairs want, but everything else is fine. (I promise this isn't some sort of weird flex. For modern eyes, I still look "fat" when tight laced. But if you aren't thin to start with YMMV with corsets depending on your specific body. Even people with more fat vary in how the bones underneath want to compress or not.) I also want to say, I'm always extremely confused how actresses can't seem to understand that you breath up with your ribcage while laced in, not out through your belly. Obviously this isn't great for projecting your voice, but it's comfortable once you get used to it. Anybody who's ever been 8 months pregnant can attest that you don't suffocate when your lungs can't go down.
I like this comment. This shows that clothes are meant to fit people and not the other way around. Also, it so cool that you have an hourglass body. It’s rare to find someone with it naturally. I bet you look awesome in a corset.❤
i kinda thought models and actors would know about the rib cage breathing thing, it accentuates your breasts over your belly so there's probably a lot of situations where they'd manually switch to rib breathing right?
If there's one point for the actresses, is that most probably they don't know/forget about upper breathing. I literally had no idea about belly breathing until one music class when I was a child. The teacher told a us about both methods and how belly breathing can be used to play flute (it was a very basic class lol) and I was blown away. Needless to say, I didn't think about relating this to corsets until now. So probably is a thing that most people don't even think about...
Absolutely, it totally depends on body composition. I'm a relatively small person but I still have enough squish in my waist that I find some reduction more comfortable than none
Something that I'm glad is getting more touched on recently in the costuming spheres is how a lot of these historical trends were really about how to achieve a fashionable look/silhouette with your body as the starting point, as opposed to how nowadays it seems like the body is what's fashionable, not the clothes, so if you don't look like what shape's popular right now, you'll almost certainly feel really bad about yourself for not looking "right" in clothes that were never designed with your shape in mind -plus the added debacle of "universal" sizes and cuts that will never be flattering on all body types because that's literally impossible
its so true. we recently went back to heronie chic from the curvier trend. (not to mention the whole bbl / buccal fat removal trends.) its so infuriating! your body shouldnt be a trend!
The comparison of you in the outfit with and without the padding was very helpful. Would have loved a split screen. Thank you for also debunking the myth that the waist is always the slimmest part of the torso. As someone whose waist measurement is 2" larger than their underbust, this myth has done a lot of damage to my body image.
Watching this I realized I’ve quite literally never seen larger women from this time period and I cannot tell you how the entire segment on reduction healed something DEEP in my psyche. Especially realizing I could definitely achieve that “ideal” Victorian body type with my current physical body if I just laced up a properly made corset… I know what I’m getting myself for my birthday…
@@Givebackthescarf That's a great point. I think for me I meant more that I didn't even know it was something I was missing until it was presented as an option. I had never thought about the fact that I hadn't seen larger people from older times because I'm not used to seeing people who look like me now. Why would I expect the past to be any different? I didn't realize I needed to see it until I did. It's not that I wouldn't have gone seeking it, its just that I couldn't have because it wasn't even something that occurred to me until just then. Does that make sense? Sorry for rambling lol.
I think about survivorship bias all the time, i even told someone about it in a museum with teeny tiny mannequins setup they were absolutely teenager sizes and I was like, I mean didn't you save some old clothes in case you had a teenager one day who would like them? She had never even considered that!
My mum literally saved her high school clothes for me and I loved them. I was always obsessed with the Cold War so being dressed like an 80s teenager was nifty and I looked just like the main character on my favourite old show set in the end of the Cold War. And to think, if she hadn't thought her daughter might want those clothes one day they'd have just been more textiles in a landfill.
Even today, the sizes and cuts available in the Jrs section are different from the women's section. Sure they are "young women" but bodies still do a lot of growing and changing during adulthood. I have my prom and wedding dresses stored, even though I have changed a lot. If someone was judging my adult size by those, they would be very wrong!
my mum most certainly didn't do that for me! I don't think it ever would have occurred to her, as a teenager, that 35 years later her daughter might be interested in her clothes. the only thing she kept was her wedding dress. it was a good thing, too, because I'm a completely different build to her and her things wouldn't have fitted me. I haven't saved any of my clothes either, they all went in the bin or got donated, depending on if I grew out of them or wore through them first. I wouldn't have anywhere to store them, anyway.
Now I've got an image of some historic woman gushing about how nice her daughter looked at her first adult party and how they simply must save the dress. Like it's a prom dress or a graduation cap.
As a not-tiny person who wore Elizabethan clothes every spring and summer for 13 years, I appreciate the discussion of the illusion aspects of undergarments. People always wanted to know how I could do what I did in such "tight" clothes. I always said it was easy if you had undergarments that actually fit you. Dancing, walking, carrying things, and running were all easily accessible in properly made clothes over correctly fitted structural garments.
Just popping in to add my existence as a second long-term renn faire performer who can in fact dance, sing, run, and do all sorts of things while corseted. I also personally happen to be a large and squishy person with a 10 inch difference between my waist and bust whilst totally uncorseted, and it's easy enough to pad the extra 5 inches onto the bottom. The biggest issue with breathing in off-the-rack modern corsetery is actually how much it tries to take off my upper ribcage and bust, because off-the-rack tends to assume that all women are pear shaped. Custom made and properly fitted is no issue at all!
I worked ladies lingerie back in the late 1980's. I had to take a class in properly measuring and fitting people for their undergarments. I was so surprised how we are really no longer taught how to find properly fitting clothing anymore and how many of us are wearing the incorrect size for our body shape. Fashion starts with a proper foundation.
FACTS!!!! i wear a corset for horseback riding (it used to be my moms so its already broken in lol) and it helps SO much with proper posture after its been about 6 hours in the saddle....Still can hop on and get off with ease, not to mention rounding cattle! granted, it was a "work corset" made of mainly stiff cotton and thick thread with deer antler 'bones' instead of plastic bones. My mom made it waaay back when she was 55 (about 20~ years ago) and it's only needed patching a couple of times. It also works great for paintball fights to avoid bruising if you wear it underneath XD My brothers were always so salty I never had purple abs like them
I find it quite amusing as an hourglass shaped autistic woman, that so many actors find corsets tight, uncomfortable, restrictive etc. even to the point one ‘jokes’ about panic attacks… I wear corsets basically everyday because the pressure of a well fitted, made for me (by me) corset helps me to regulate emotions and prevent panic attacks. Thanks to Chanel’s like Bernadette and other (Abby Cox, Nicole Rudolph, Morgan Donner et all) I braved teaching myself how to sew and then sew a corset, something I never thought I could do! They have quite literally changed my life. Bring back the corset!!!❤❤❤ ⌛️
Omg also autistic and when I just made a mock-up of a corset to test the pattern, I loved it so much I didn’t even want to take it apart to salvage the bones/busk etc 😂 It feels like a constant hug lol, or when I would pick my dog up and sit with her on my lap.
I'm neither autistic nor deal with ongoing anxiety issues, but over the years of corset wearing I found that it absolutely had a calming effect for me. I remember a specific time I was quite upset about something and my boyfriend suggested I put on my corset. I did and felt immediately improved. He was very smug about being perceptive enough to have noticed the effect. lol
In the 80s we wore very square T-shirts tucked into our slim at the waist jeans. First you’d tuck it tight and then raise your shoulders to pull just enough fullness out. I wore a wider leather belt. This accomplished what you demonstrated. I had never even considered the illusion this created. I often wore shoulder pads too. I’m not going to run screaming back into the 80s, but it makes me think.
I wore stretchy waist pants, having 3 babies from 83-89 🤣 My husband asked me to wear a pair of jeans pls. He forgot what I looked like in them! I told him I hadn’t had a pr that fit since a few mos post-baby 1 hahahahaha My thyroid tanked postpartum baby 1.
Thing a lot of people seem to forget is that there were people back then who already had natural hourglass figures who then chose to lace down. From what I've seen from my own experience wearing corsets, and from others with a similar body type to mine (natural hourglass), we tend to be squishier in the middle and as we've got the figure naturally, it only takes a small amount of reduction to make it look really extreme. When I was 34", 24", 34" I wore my 20" corsets and then got some made to close at 18" and I don't think I looked particularly extreme back then with only a 4" reduction (wore with a 2" gap). But when I gained weight on meds, it all went to my boobs and hips (unsurprisingly given my figure type) and it became possible to reduce only an inch or two but get quite an extreme looking shape. My boobs and hips are now 14" larger than my waist before I put a corset on. If I reduce by 2" (which is easy peasy) then I've got a 16" hipspring. Which is an amount considered "tightacing" proportions back in the day. But my waist is squishy, even more so now, so its easy enough to reduce 4" and get an 18" hipspring. And that's all with staying within the realms of light levels of waist reduction. I would have to go custom to go any tighter (only reason I can get a 4" reduction is my off the rack corsets have hip ties to let the hips out enough to give an even lacing gap in back). But I imagine I could easily manage 6" reduction with little issue if I did given that I could almost do that with a week's worth of wearing every day back when I had a 24" waist. I would not be surprised if some of the actresses famed for their extreme figures were natural hourglasses who then laced down by just a normal amount and got accused of tightlacing by those around them. And if you add on padding too.... well...
I’m a very hefty lady but found some nice steel spring boned corset. I can comfortably squeeze in 6 inches and already have an enormous bosom (natural J Cup) When I slap on that corset people are amazed how I look. Every thinks I lost weight. Nope. Illusion through reduction.
I also have an hourglass figure, or something approximating an hourglass, 31" 24" 36", but am very short, with a short waist and firm abdomen. I can't lace down at all, maybe an inch if I really wanted to.
@@Givebackthescarf I'm not saying that I can't achieve a dramatic hourglass figure at all, with proper padding I could. But I have almost no fat in my midsection, it's all firm muscle, and there is very little space between th bottom of my ribs and the top of my hip bones. So, at my waistline, there is nothing to make smaller. It just doesn't move. Whether or not I can make my waist smaller by corsetting has no bearing on whether I have an hourglass figure or not. An hourglass figure refers to a ratio of measurements.
Talking about the Regency period, there were tons of interviews from the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice where all of the actresses gush about how comfortable the corsets or stays were, though I also wish to point out how not thin the actresses in that miniseries were. No, not large either, just not tiny.
One reason I prefer the show to the Keira Knightley film is that everyone actually seems to be wearing clothes that fit them instead of just weird small baggy dresses 😂
oh I so loved this series and the actors all looked 'normal', aka not just tiny whiny body types. moreover the hair also seemed period appropriate, which they don't do in most movies because it's not 'pretty'. I guess it's time to revisit this gem.
Your "corsets weren't worn that way" videos have seriously helped me so much! I often wear my corseted costumes for an entire day and used to be incredibly uncomfortable by the end. Padding is a glorious addition 😁
I cried several times watching this video. I am a naturally round person, and generally have given up on pursuing several of my dreams because of it. You mentioning that a surviving dress had a waist measurement of 37.5 inches blew me away, because that is my waist when wearing a comfortable corset. I rarely see myself in fashion, both modern and historical, but knowing that people like me have always existed, it's so freeing.
Im naturally tiny person, but currently gaining weight and will get pregnant in few years. Videos like these help me so much to overcome my body dismorphia.
Of course there has always been people bigger. But they were usually the wealthy people. Most people were tiny from hard work and lack of food. A old weight loss remedy was to actually on purpose "take" worms. Can't remember which kind. But when the desired weight was obtained they would take deformed. Very disgusting and horrible for you.....but that's what they did. And really, it us chubby people's fault and we can't act the victim. We simply like to eat and don't have the self control skinny people have. Albeit some are born to be skinnier over others.
Of course! Things like body type are inherited. There are round people today because there were round people in the past thriving, marrying and having babies. ;)
This video is so amazing, thank you. a) corsets are comfortable if you wear the right shape and size for your body b) corsets work better on bigger bodies c) it's all about ~proportionizing~ I work in a store that sells 1950s fashion, and gothic clothing - including corsets. They're not historically accurate corsets but the principles you listed apply nontheless and I wish more people would know about them! Especially bigger women are often lead to believe (eg by the movies/actresses you mentioned) that they are not the right size to wear historical clothing or corsets. THANK YOU so much, I love your work.
I watched a video about shoes and how people say we have bigger feet than people 100+ years ago and you mentioned survivorship bias and the woman in that video said something similar that the smaller sizes survived because they were usually unsold sizes or hardly worn and the average sized shoes were so worn they were thrown out. So the size 5 shoes survived but the size 8 didn't. She also mentioned how the shoes fabric stretched a lot so when not filled with a real foot it looks extremely small.
I think the most interesting part in this is that these styles of clothing with corsets were MUCH more forgiving and had much more of room for being comfortable and had more support to the body than modern clothing that does literally nothing for your body, but people tend to think the complete opposite. The fact that all of those garments were made to fit a specific person and now most of us have to use the "universal" shapes and sizes in clothing should speak for itself, but for some reason it does not and it is funny
Literally. Victorian era: wear garments perfectly tailored to your measurements and designed to give the illusion of your desired proportions. Modern day: here’s a crop top and some shorts sized several inches away from your actual measurements, and if that doesn’t look good on you well sucks for you I guess
I sang opera for many years, and had the great good fortune to experience a custom, made just for me, corset. I've also had to wear many 'off the shelf' corsets, and the difference is night and day. I think I still have welts in my armpits from a too long in waist corset. A well fitting corset is not only comfortable, it actually can assist a singer's breathing technique, by ensuring good posture, especially when sitting.
I did high school choir in a corset (had back problems and couldn't afford a proper brace) for over a year. My friends had a "wtf" moment when I did Kate Bush karaoke in a corset during a holiday party.
Can I ask how you get a good low breath in a corset? Do you make sure it's not laced too tight? I've heard other opera singers say they actually help as you have something to push against with your belly. It's so interesting!
I was in a medical corset due to a spinal injury, and that thing was MEANT to restrict and stiffen and support my spine, and it was STILL comfortable. I was able to move and breathe and exist 24/7 without difficulty, even though it was designed to restrict me. I was still able to function properly wearing a sheath of plastic and metal buckled tight around my waist. The whole "corsets shift your organs and make you faint" is so ridiculous!
I suspect you and I wore a similar brace. I have scoliosis and wore one for three and a half years, for 23 hours a day. I hated it but got on with life. Organs stayed in place!
your body know where your organs are supposed to go! That's why surgeons just shove them back in when they're done. The body puts them to their right place. You're right, it is ridiculous! I wish people thought better of their bodies, your brain (or is your brain yourself?) may be the smartest but the rest is smart too.
I found an article several years ago, written in the 1850-1860 time period (with graphic pictures)about what wearing a corset from the time one was four years old did to one's body. Amelia Bloomer raged about women wearing tight corsets. Somehow I don't think they were wrong.
It speaks to how negligent and toxic Hollywood is to their actresses. That they would rather hurt an actress for "historical accuracy" rather than find another way around which is ironically more historically accurate
@@parkerbrown-nesbit1747 I have a recollection of similar articles being mentioned in a RUclips video before (maybe not one of Bernadette’s though) and I believe it was mentioned how they would’ve been written by men making assumptions (possibly on poor medical basis) and also based on very rare extreme cases where a few people may have tight laced but it was certainly not the norm, so should probably be taken with a pinch of salt. But, as someone that wore a medical brace at age 5 to prevent my body healing/developing scoliosis following surgery on my back, I could imagine if a similar item was worn incorrectly while the body is still developing you could have the opposite effect, though I wold really hope people didn’t do that to kids but I guess there will always be outliers… Overall, I had a similar experience to the above commenters in it being a constant snug feeling but not painful and to my knowledge I have no recurrent problems due to wearing it at that time (now 26)
“The waist measurement on this dress measures 37 and a half inches.” That. That’s my waist. I knew they weren’t all tiny but I’ve had so much trouble seeing myself in Victorian clothing and feeling like I’d done it right cause I couldnt fully put down the tiny waist image in my head because of all the pictures
Can confirm that illusion is extremely helpful in this regard! My wedding dress wasn't corseted and I didn't wear any shapewear (i.e., a girdle or something like it) underneath, but it was (I think this is the right term) a princess cut, and had a very full skirt and a crinoline that I wore underneath. That, coupled with a wide scoop neckline and big puffy sleeves - suffice to say that my very average waistline of 29 inches (on a 5'4" person) was made to look very small! This trickery can be super effective. I think we mostly see it today in wedding dresses, though.
Even with "normal" every day clothes, you can illusion a lot. Like, I have a bit of a stomach, wide hips and average bust. So I tend to wear pants at my natural waist or a bit higher to smooth out the stomach a bit, I tuck in my top and floof it out at the front and bam, my stomach is gone and my hips don't appear as large anymore since my bust no appears propertionally bigger. A belt now emphasizes my waist to appear smaller. It works even better with dresses and skirts, wear it at the waist, bam, where's my stomach gone. Right now is actually a good time to find the type of pants that fit you, since so many types of jeans and pants are in stores right since fashion is doing things. Different bodies need different clothes.
@@ateisate7270 Notice how ‘streetwear’ has grown more popular. We like looser fitting clothes for the same reason that people from other eras applied padding.
I hope a costumer for a costume drama reaches out to you and your colleagues for advice, someday. I'm truly tired of seeing actresses get damaged because of inaccuracy. Edit: best example of survivorship bias are the airplanes that came back from being shot at. People were saying that we had to better protect the areas that had been hit by hundreds of bullets, but what ended up saving more people and planes was beefing up the areas that none of the returning planes had been damaged in. BECAUSE ALL OF THE DESTROYED PLANES HAD BEEN SHOT THERE AND DISINTEGRATED.
I love that example of survivorship bias - there's an accompanying illustration too, that shows a plane silhouette just absolutely peppered with bullet holes, and then you stop and think... and it sinks in that THOSE are the planes that made it back to base. And then you get it.
@@MichaelAlthauser One comparison I saw someone make in response to that post was that injuries from car accidents increased in number after seatbelts were widely implemented. Because without seatbelts, those injuries would have been deaths instead.
@@dbseamz A similar think happened with a guy in the US commenting on how number of cyclists in the Netherlands who had been injured had grown, so cycling was more dangerous in the Netherlands and the US was safer. Not stopping to consider the fact that 2 year olds and their great grandparents all cycle. The rise in injuries was from the cyclists over the age of 75, who kept cycling thanks to electric assist bicycles, instead of stopping to cycle due to their physical limitations.
One of the most egregious things about controlling one's silhouette is that the whole padding is still being continued and it's been an uninterrupted practice in it since the middle of the 1800's in a very specific theatrical genre: Drag. Both drag queens and kings know exactly how to alter one's silhouette to achieve incredible illusions of waist reduction and if you watch Drag Race it's so easy to see them doing it. And yes, it's been uninterrupted since the Victorian Era because it's when the concept of drag balls started happening and became a staple of queer culture.
That is a brilliant point. Drag artists are often using every single trick in the Victorian playbook to achieve the illusion of feminine proportions. Corsets, padding, clothing proportions, etc.
Yes! I'm an AFAB queen and don't pad my hips or bum because I already have a lot there, but I typically wear two push-up bras at once in drag, plus a full body girdle, to lift and enhance my bust.
I recently read the book 'How to be a Victorian', and, although I thought all information was accurate, it didn't really mention these methods in the chapter about garments, but mainly explained that corsets were often used to reduce your waist inch by inch over the years and that many women fainted from the practice. I feel like now I have a full picture of what it was actually like! Thank you!
My sister is a midwife and did a course last year about traditional midwifery and was totally stunned about the fact that her training in university was kind of slimmed down (like the waists of those thin actresses you could say). BECAUSE she learned that a corset was a very tradional way to help pregnant women. NOT to prevent them from breathing, NOT to make them better looking, NOT to opress them but instead to help them breathing and help them carry the weight of their baby and their belly! So I absolutly believe you when you say a corset should make you comfortable and help you, especially during straining periods like pregnancy or hard work, when training your muscles just is not enough.
The thing that always baffles me is the amount of underlayers that we lost in the span of around 40 years. When I was a child in the late 80s/early 90s, my mom still wore a lot of undergarments (bra+panties as a base, pantyhose, an elastic girdle, an undershirt and THEN the actual outer clothes, mostly padded at the shoulders), and my maternal grandmother also wore a corset AND a garter belt with stockings, because she felt uncomfortable with a pantyhose and had scoliosis (and so do I). Growing up I was taught that, as a woman, I had to wear a lot of layers to be proper, but I ditched everything as soon as I started to wear a bra in middle school, because I always felt very uncomfortable (and the woolen undershirt gave me rashes, especially when the weather was warmer, which is pretty often in Southern Italy, where I live). It took me decades to unlock the secret of augmenting the other parts of your silhouette to hide or modify your appearance, just because we now do it to our actual bodies instead of our clothes - in my case, I have pretty thick legs compared to my upper body, and it stopped being such an eyesore for me (personal taste valid only for my own body) when I started training in an actual sport and my arms and shoulders got bigger. Still, I despise wearing too many layers of clothing, and I found my way to my peace of mind, but learning the techniques and crafts that our ancestors used is so informative and educational, because, as I said, we tend to forget it even when we saw it in our actual lifetime. Bonus: my mom is now I her 60s and ditched most of her undergarments when I refused to wear them because I found them uncomfortable. She agreed with me.
@@alleecmo Doubly so because we often wear partially or completely polyester, which is also not remotely breathable. The world’s hotter and we’re wearing clothes that retain more heat. It’s like we’re all sweat boxing.
@@GuiSmith And we have central heating and air conditioning. I can't imagine wearing so many layers. My place is right now 65F and I'm in a cotton T shirt and cotton pyjama pants. And cotton ankle socks. For sure unacceptable for certain classes in Victorian times but probably just fine for us peasants. When it comes to comfort, I'd rather be a peasant even if actually I'm not.
Plus the advent of washing machines makes it a lot easier for clothing manufacturers to convince us to buy more clothing (more sales) made with far less material (lower material costs), especially when you throw planned obsolescence into the mix
I think this trend began earlier in the US. In the 70s my mother only had the base of bra and panties. Plus pantyhose if she wore a dress, which was seldom.
Okay seeing the difference with and without underpinnings was HUGE, total mindset shift regarding historical costuming. Bernadette, you continue to be the best costume RUclipsr out there. Never change!
Thank you for always adding women of color to your historical fashion-y reference photos! That inclusion is so important to all your viewers, but especially your viewers of color. We love an inclusive queen! 🎉
It is very very important and I absolutely love it too! I’m black and often don’t see us included in historical fashion but I’m like…we were there! We wore clothes! There’s lots of photos of us!
A week late to the party but I wanted to mention that tightlacing is also something one did gradually. If someone WAS into high fashion and tightlacing, that's not something they just decided to do one day and get an eight inch reduction in their waist. You slowly lace more tightly over time, and slowly increase how long you wear it for. Hell, a friend of mine who started wearing a corset regularly who *wasn't* trying to increase reduction found that over time she was more comfortable with it tighter and for longer periods simply because her body had gotten used to how to move in it.
As someone who used to be very into (real) corsets and tightlacing and I am a size 0, I do usually get my waist an additional 5in smaller for that 15in difference. But it isn't comfortable to wear for long periods of time. Having more weight will actually make it easier to tightlace comfortably.
'Survivor Bias' is a fun thing! My brother noted after having kids: there is one diaper size that kids leap through (so don't stock many of those) and again in elementary school one pants size that were easy to find in resale shops in great condition because kids zoomed through that particular moment faster than wear.
Let's not forget another form of survivor bias here, the Petty Dress. A dress whose sole purpose was to allow the Duchess of Here to subtly imply that the Countess of There had put on a lot of weight because the Count was dallying with the milk maid and the Countess had comfort eaten herself out of her dresses. The Duchess of Here only wore that dress once because she was only willing to/had to suffer through the one evening laced to hell and back, so it looks like it's only been worn for five hours. It's a no expenses spared dress that's practically untouched and makes an excellent museum piece. We don't have full provenances for all of these pieces, so we can't be sure whether the dress was meant to be comfortable attire for a lovely party with friends or weaponized fashion for one critical evening. Never forget how petty people can be.
Yup. I'm quite sure, there were very spectacular (and equally uncomfortable) dresses made and worn exclusively to slight/impress/cause jealousy etc. Because...human nature and women getting into physical altercations being frowned upon 😎. If you can't punch the b**ch in the face, you gotta at least look fancier then her!
I have had parts of this discussion with friends. As I do historical dance, I end up being the 'ladies maid' to get my dance partner (a renowned dance historian) dressed. And I helped build my wife's corset. This video will be sent to anyone who spouts the insanity. And as my daughter is now getting into the same, we should have fun building her garments to reality.
As a woman who has had weight issues all my life, I’m so grateful for your video. I was told by my mother I might want to consider wearing a contraption known as. ‘Girdle’. Whalebone was not used on these torture devices. I gave this traditional method of looking shapely by sophomore year of college. Btw, I adore how intellectually gifted you present your view point.
Don't forget that even without waist reduction, a 34" oval and a 34" circle look very different from the front. People are naturally more of an oval, but when the corset redistributes the shape into more of a circle, they look smaller--even if the measurement hasn't changed at all!
Much like @Valleyviolet, I am a "plus" sized person with the natural +10/waist/+15 measurements. As a young woman, I had a 21-inch waist, but I still had this proportion. On Easter Saturday, my son and I walked about two miles (to our local park for an Easter Egg hunt, Then to lunch and back home). I was in full 1875 regalia; corset, cage bustle, etc. It was the most comfortable walk I have ever been on. (Lunch was a bit of a mess when I gave my son his drink and got gravy and mashed potatoes all over my bodice). I do have two actual points to make. 1) When lay folk talk about Victorian clothing, why do they always seem not to remember the OG, herself, Queen Victoria?!?!?!? After nine children and her husband passing, she ate her feelings and got huge. Being 5'1" and having a corseted waist of about 36' makes for a large person. Many of her gowns still exist because SHE WAS THE EVERLOVING QUEEN!!! 2) Mae West. For those who know, that's all I need to say. Mae West was the Queen of body illusion and photo manipulation. Even at the start of her career, she used corsetry, floof, big hats, and platform shoes to look taller and more petite. During her film career, she would have her clothing and costumes cut smaller in the front and larger in the back (say a modern size six in the front and an 18 in the back), then strategically place her thumb on the "side seam" to show the air brushers where her waist "should" be, If she didn't like the picture, she would take a hole punch to the face, so I could not be used.
OMG, the thumb thing makes me giggle! 😂 I think we forget that a lot of these Victorian & Edwardian ladies whose photos are most reproduced as part of the "tiny waist" debate were Professional Beauties, high society ladies, or music hall stars & similar... The equivalents of today's movie stars, Kardashians, adult entertainment personalities, models & so on. Manipulating their public image was big business for them too! As with all of history, context is everything...
I would love to see a video looking at how plus sized women in regency, Edwardian and Victorian eras made period fashion work for their bodies. Bonus idea: I’ve been binging Kaz Rowe’s videos and watched their video on Rube Waddel and how he once fought a teammate for wearing a straw hat after Labor Day and it made me wonder what were the fashion faux paws(?) (I can’t spell apologies) of these eras?
That reminds me of a photo from, I guess, the 1880s on which a larger busted woman had a cup sitting on her bust. Shared it to my friends with the caption "life goals" :D
There's another RUclips out there whose name just won't come to mind - she's done videos showing how much a corset's shape helps with wearing garments in different eras. There's some eras where without the corset you can see how unflattering a garment woukd be, and some where actually getting a dress on without the corset is a monumental struggle. I wish I could remember her name because she does some really great videos. Think she has longer red hair and maybe a southern accent? She's definitely American. Maybe someone else can direct you to her if I dont manage to recall and update this comment. It's not quite what you're looking for bit it's interesting! Edit: She's been mentioned below by Adri in the comments - Lady Rebecca Fashions
(I'm a tomboy)and after this I've just realized something I can do (after watching the illusion part) to make myself have more of a flat non curvy physique. I can wrap (not tightly) a thin piece of fabric around my waist so it dips in less and reduces the size of my bust. I know its the total opposite of this video Bernadette, but thankyou :)
I'd recommend looking at shapewear to get some structural ideas! Control top underwear/bike shorts would likely work for what you're trying to achieve, and you could try a 50s style girdle (or something similar) if you find that more comfortable. (Ps. I'm a hourglass figured transmasc myself who loves some shapewear, girdles and corsets to go with my binders/sports bras 😉)
If you don't want to go the shapewear route, and just want to stick with the fabric around the middle. Remember from art class, optically dark colours send to the back, light colours bring to the front (cue the black and white pictures that look 3D). From my bad fashion sense, shiny fabrics catch light and work like light colours and bring to the front. (I tried to look thinner by wearing a fabric that was shiny, I looked twice the size!). So, if you wear a plain black tshirt and trousers and wear a shiny orange band flat to your body around your waist, you likely would have a big looking belly. Also, if you go to a fabric or shop known for sewing, you may be able to find something that looks like a piece of fabric but is very stiff. (There may be several with different stiffnesses, and there might be two versions, one you sew on and one that you glue on. (The glue may be needed to be activated by using an iron!)). If you attach it to the fabric around the stomach, it will remain smooth (especially if you iron the material you are wanting people to see before you attach it). Of course, you can just use a ruffled material, which may appear more casual and actually give you a more 3D effect. I wish you luck, health, success, and happiness in your experiments! May you love how you look regardless of what you wear (and if you wear anything!)!
i love learning about historical fashion because it really reframes how today padding or padded shapewear are seen as "cheating" in a way. when really there’s nothing wrong with it, why beat ourselves up about not having the "right" body when clothes have always had the capacity and role of creating that for us!
Also, like you mentioned in a previous video, the hair style and the hats also helped with the illusion. Big curly hairstyles as opposed to flat hair helped draw more attention and volume to the shoulder area.
Can't believe Bernadette turned into the Baba Yaga at the end there! Wonderful video! And still incredible that we keep getting tricked by all this, well, trickery! However I had never realised that the reason many actresses complain about corsets being part of their outfits might be (not only that they're not used to wearing one) that the way they're making them wear one is not suited for their usually pretty slim figure, and the film industry insists on tightening the laces instead of using other methods. Very good point! 🤔
Same here. Very good point! I can actually picture it perfectly now because I'm only now in my mid-thirties becoming a bit squishable in the middle and I'm still not very much so up and down the ribcage and hips; I have a rectangular bony torso and bony hips, with boobs attached. Which actually happens to work marvellously for Regency (since my boobs _are_ squishable and can easily be pushed up). But if anyone tried to turn my torso into more of an inverted triangle to fit the Victorian hourglass idea only through lacing, it would definitely result in disappointment and pain.
You’d think the people hired to create costumes for these “Hollywood” films would actually do some research before they start designing! The tight-lacing scenes are endlessly frustrating to watch, knowing that the stays and corsets that would have been used for the different time-periods would have had completely different purposes and silhouettes. They were made to be comfortable and supportive for the wearer as well as to support the dress and help create a silhouette. Thank you for this breakdown, Bernadette!
One frustrating thing about movie costuming is that the costumes are there to support the script and the director’s vision, not be accurate. So a costumer might very well know that tight lacing wasn’t done that way, but there’s no way the script is getting rewritten based on that.
@SB yuuuup. So many film costumers have commented on this. They may want padding, but the director wants oppression. (Whether because of *asthetic* or fetish or because they want the corset to become a visual shorthand for the oppression of the character, accuracy to the wind.)
@@Noracharlesssthe "corset scene" in pirates of the caribbean drives me crazy because the costumers didn't make a corset, they made stays, so you know they did their research, but the plot needed to happen and having Elizabeth faint from tightlacing the best they could come up with i guess
@@rowan_like_the_tree The fact that they decided to have her faint from the corset, and not from shock, or even fake fainting from shock to avoid the conversation, both of which were acceptable things to do.... Ugh.
Hi best friend, I love how sensitive you were about body types and body image. This is strangely comforting... I grew up with the skinny cult in full swing and it's done a number on me and my peers for sure. I still want an hourglass figure, maybe I'll start padding rather than trying to stay away from delicious treats!
I'm one of those people that uses corsets like pet thunder jackets. I deal with anxiety to the point that I feared that I would be late to my own wedding solely on the fact of being anxious about it all and my body sending me to the bathroom. My dress had a corset built in (a part of why I picked it) and I got one of my bridesmaids to tighten it down to where I wanted it to be. No anxiety that whole day! I was still late for the wedding but that was just because they forgot what room I was waiting in for it all to start... One day I want to get a better corset, but for now I have one that I got for renaissance fair-going and I'll wear that for days I have high anxiety and it works. Makes me feel like I'm always being secured down, I guess. But like you say, I only ever tighten it down to where it's comfortable to me, not to the point that the strings break- like what happened in my high school english teacher's class when she was showing off how to tighten a corset...
Honestly when you had finished layering up and just had the white shirt and black skirt, they proportions while small still look natural. But the second you grabbed the red sash and laid it flat, your waist looked even smaller! The illusion is real!
IKR!! 😱 I always looked at pics of Edwardian ladies wearing those sashes & wondered how on earth they could bend or eat in them? Had no idea the corset underneath would prevent them from compressing the actual body! 😮 It's incredible how much clothing proportions can trick the eye without making any change at all to the body underneath. Think that knowledge is something most of us plebs have lost in this age of cheap generic clothes & minimal layering...? (People who can afford to have custom tailored clothing still use it, but don't generally announce the fact!)
You should look into Margaret Fountaine,who was an Edwardian cyclist,naturalist,explorer,collector of broken male hearts/conquests. The distances she cycled in full Edwardian clothing is something else! You can see in her photos she was quite athletic. It was all in the hair apparently...the broken hearts. My favourite quote is her finding herself tired despite 8(or is it 10) large beers.
The survivorship bias aspect makes sense -- some of the idealized proportions/measurements you were talking about are simply how I was shaped in my late teens with no reduction or augmentation. I was able to wear some gorgeous dresses from the 50s that had clearly been made for someone exactly like me, then only worn a few times.
I was reading fanfictions for this game set in 1868. The writers and the people who made the game (released in 2015) were perpetuating the whole: "I can't breathe/move in this infernal dress! I can't wait to tear it off!" So I commented to the writers: "Please stop stereotyping dresses and corsets. They were made to be quite comfortable and you could easily move in them." They haven't said anything back. But I'm hopeful that they'll see it and change their minds.
It would probably help if you linked videos like this one and professional articles on the subject. It's hard to fix writing with just "don't do this," because you don't know what to replace that information with
@@PersephoneDaSilva Still, you could let them know that there's a RUclips video by Bernadette Banner called "How the Victorians Faked Tiny Waists (without fainting!)" and recommend they look it up and give it a watch to get a broader range of ideas on women's fashion in the period their game is set ;)
As an older woman with an increasingly "apple" shaped torso, I've not been happy with many of the fashion choices that claim to disguise my less than "ideal" shape. But after watching this video I think I will play more with the hip/bust illusions when I make my clothes. I adore fuller, longer skirts - they are not recommended for my body type as they draw too much attention to the wide waist. By adding some of these techniques, I feel I can re-introduce skirts into my wardrobe, and feel that I've done my figure justice. I think some of these concepts can be applied to more contemporary clothing, as well as period garments. Thank you, Bernadette
I visited a museum storage facility today and spent some time in the costume department. It was fantastic to see the garments up close and see the sheer amount of work in a pre-machine age
I myself am a long time viewer but have yet to comment, but I decided to discard my silence because I am so excited to see Bernadette back on the internet! You single-handedly revived my passion for sewing and dress history. I hope you are very well, and continue to flourish in all your endeavors! 🎉
I really am impressed with this video, especially the augmenting bit you demonstrated so beautifully! I recently read Agatha Christie's biography in which she discussed how, having grown up during the late Victorian/Edwardian period, ALL the fashion, she wrote, was on having a large 'bosom', and she desperately wanted one just like her grandmother's! 😆 And then of course by the time Christie was full-grown and possessed a 'womanly' bosom, it was the 20s and fashions had changed to be slim and flat, much to her dismay. You can't win 😁 Waist size was not mentioned AT ALL. So that made me wonder - how many of our ancestors were REALLY concerned about the waist effect, or was it the result of their concern about the big bust/hips effect. After all, these features are preeminent in motherhood, and in past society where the main fear was under-population rather than today's overpopulation, looking like a mother or a prospective mother was actually something to be proud of! How much did they REALLY care about small waists except for enhancing those more significant areas? After all, if a girl is so tiny she's unlikely to survive Victorian childbirth (like 'quite narrow' Melanie in Gone With the Wind), how many mothers are going to encourage their sons to marry a girl just to have her die in labour? And if a girl felt healthy enough and wanted kids enough to overcome the risks of her natural proportions, of course she's going to try to minimize the concern by augmenting them. And then of course there's the issue of warmth. Without central heating, layers both on top and bottom were necessary to keep one warm, and making it fashionable made necessity more bearable I daresay. Clinching at the waist would have been the best place to ensure both clothes not falling off and preventing cold air flow between the leg and chest area. I'll never understand how Regency fashion even got off the ground - as a UK resident I cannot see the practicality of those light flowy ancient-Rome (where it's warm) inspired garments in our climate - no wonder the Victorian fashions lasted so much longer! 😆
I always love your corset debunking bits and vids! I think it also should be taken into account that alteration via pictures was even MORE rampant when the artist was able to do so at the beginning because it was a painting or drawing. The subject could just tell the painter to nip in their waist, remove scarring, or change their nose shape from the beginning. Or the artist could simply draw the picture with those dimensions because they wanted to. A lot of the drawing that were used in fashion pates, magazines, or advertisements were purposefully drawn with an exaggerated silhouette that wasn't supposed to be realistic.
I think another method of determining how to give yourself the illusion of a smaller waist is to figure out what clothes actually flatter you. For instance, I figured out that clothes that are slightly oversized and flowing flatter me more than entirely fitting or extremely oversized clothes, so I prefer the wide sash method to seemingly reduce the size of my waist. (A wide belt does good for me as well) Or if you look better in more tailored looks, padding in the hips and bust might be a better option for you, etc.
I wish this was something that was easier to figure out!! 😅 Actually once went to the lengths of photographing myself in underwear & digitally drawing on all sorts of various clothing shapes (paper doll style) in order to try & figure out what the heck would work best with existing proportions. Kind of got it sorted - problem is, chronic illness then changed my body shape & so now I have to work it out all over again..! 🙈 Seriously though, it feels like this is something most people either have to figure out by extensive trial & error, or never DO figure out and so are always unhappy with how they look...? I think it's a major factor in the resurgence of interest in historical fashions - people who can't find anything flattering in modern styles suddenly discover the proportions of another age really work for them! Hope that diversity continues to be encouraged for people of all shapes and genders...
@@anna_in_aotearoa3166 I Kibbe-tested myself to get an answer what a heck is wrong with my body... It's only system that was actually size inclusive (which is wow given it came from 1980's) and gives you type that stays even if your size don't. I was Gamine when I was wearing M's and I'm Gamine wearing XL. It has it's flaws, mainly being stuck in 80's mindset and explanations, but it's possible to find revamped versions that works more for today's world. At least it gave me rough outline to work with. Which in my case means: I look good in 1960's and 1920's, 1910' are good too but if I try to fake hourglass shape by any means I'd just look riddiculous :)
I have a bit of a pudgy stomach, and I've found that flowy dresses with sashes that tie at the natural waist give me an illusion of more dramatic proportions than I actually have. This only works because my pudge is directly front and center, though- my silhouette is rather hourglass-shaped as it is (though I suppose that does raise the question of what counts as an hourglass shape! My chest might be too small to count) and I just need to have some way to disguise the front bulge so as to allow my shape to shine through. (For context, I'm 81/74.5/84)
Now that’s educational, eloquent and fun! Well, it’s Bernadette, isn’t it?! I also always thought, why would women want to constantly harm and torture themselves, they apparently loved the fashion, so there must be something wrong with our perception! Thanks Bernadette for this beautiful video, probably one of her best ones (which isn’t quite as easy to achieve)😊
I liked your visual comparison of corset/ no corset. Personally the visual impression of with corset to me looked better, and I wonder if modern elastic and moulded foam underwear would achieve the same look.😢
Another point about the illusion of the victorian corset is that it changes the shape of the waist from oval to circular so it looks smaller from the front but wider from the side.
Also, seeing extant garments in museums etc. And thinking they were all so tiny can be really relative to the viewer, we tend to think of ourselves as 'normal' size. Some extants I see I think, I wish I could try that on, it looks like it would fit me, or if its something smaller that it might fit my sisters. It would be so strange for me to look at a larger item (ie. Queen Victoria's clothing from later years) and think that all people were that size or to go into a plus size clothing shop and decide that all people today are larger. Of course there are differences between average sizes in the past compared to now but not to such an extreme extent
You've done videos before on corsets, comfort and illusion but this one really helped me to understand my frustrations with a corset. I'm 4'11", short waisted, muscular, and with a pretty much "sturdy" straight up and down figure rather than hourglass. I've made several corsets and can never get more than an inch and half reduction which made me think the probably was fitting and construction. Thanks so much for clearly detailing what is going on!
I love corsets because they take the pressure of a waistband off of my organs. I’m very healthy, and whilst I cannot ever comfortably tight lace people just naturally assume I do. Those who don’t wear a corset just will not understand how it is so much more comfortable with than it is without.
I think it's more comfortable for done people than others, depending on your preferences. I like the "firm squeeze" feeling of a corset, but others don't. I'm in your same boat by the way, fairly skinny and I get at most an inch or two of reduction from my corsets. I think the reshaping (circle vs oval) and smoothing effect is what gives the impression of a teeny waist.
I had to stop wearing fake jeans because of the waistband (even if the the right size or very loose, and even with stretchy fabric!). I feel really bad about myself because jogging bottoms are the only comfortable clothing. (I love how skirts look, but feel so uncomfortable in them unless wearing trousers underneath!). I've been too unwell to 'dress up' for a long time, and now I feel so bad about how I look that I'm in severe denial about my clothes. It has gotten so bad that I don't have any mirrors in the house (other than tiny face ones for dealing with my eyebrows!). I could use some advice to take the first step. It's been so bad that I've been pushed to face the need to buy new clothes because (whilst not a complete hole!) I can see what my bathroom looks like, and even what colour everything is THROUGH the material of the jogging bottoms! (Tops are in a similar state, but I wear a higher neckline one underneath, so less concern!).
@@phoenixmoon5580 one of the problems with modern clothing is its immodesty. When I dressed in modern dresses and skirts I felt very uncomfortable about my body. Might I recommend looking at thrift stores for loose cut skirts and dresses that cover up nicely? I found that by hiding away what made me uncomfortable from the eyes of the world, I then judged myself less harshly.
@@christinareynolds8179 I prefer shopping in second hand shops, especially charity shop. However, I just don't like the feeling of where my legs rub together, so I need to wear trousers under skirts if I wear them at all. (Too much laundry to do that too often!). However, I would like to find an ACTUAL comfortable bra for my size! However, bras seem to be designed to be uncomfortable and make bigger, or uncomfortable and squish. So I guess I'm between a rock and a hard place for modern bras!
Also corsets were to keep good posture not to make your waist smaller. Tight liners were kind of like corsets but they were for making your waist smaller. Some people would get corsets that were too small bc they were cheaper and would do the trick.
fun fact, the dress you showed when talking about waist measurements being bigger than ppl assume is my exact unreduced waist measurement, was very fun to hear lol. I'm in that portion of bigger people who's waist looks tiny by virtue of the rest of me being big (hips are a full 11 inches wider than my waist lol) so victorian fashion has always appealed to me a lot since it's like if I was a fashion style
Your jacket is amazing. I love everything about it. The silhouette is stunning. The pronouncedly peaked lapels are rather bold, but they somehow just fit so well into the whole. The fabric is very beautiful. The sleeves are simply set perfectly. I could go on, but I'm aware nobody wants me to, so I'm gonna stop right here. Anyways, it's glorious.
The day I learned that padding would be added to the shoulders or bust of shirts was the day I figured out it's not about making the body itself look a certain way but the clothing.
This was fascinating! And actually, the old Victorian trick of augmentation is something I use personally, and I teach my styling clients. The gist: cinch your waist and wear a voluminous top and bottom - it gives the illusion of an hourglass figure. Also, gotta say, I adored the Nord VPN ad. Creative and hilarious. Glad you managed to get out of the pot!
I can take 4" off my waist with a corset, but I'm fluffy. A nicely fit corset should feel like a gentle hug. Where I feel it is in my back as the corset prevents slouching. Very fun and informative video.
I’ve become addicted to this channel. That scene in Titanic was Rose crying about her impossible situation of being forced to marry Cal for his money. Not the rightness of the corset.
I feel like modern day people are just so distracted by the corset in that scene that they think it is the focus (and therefore what Rose is crying about). It was just part of her life as a high-class woman in 1912, and the woman dressing Rose definitely knew how to do it correctly.
@@jessk187 absolutely. I have a bachelor’s degree in history and did my thesis on the female narrative from 1909-1945 (social history ). I came across a phrase “the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there” I forget who said it but it’s a great quote.
The tightness of the corset is unfortunately being used as a metaphor for the constrictions that Rose was facing. The mother lacing Rose's corset even tighter further drives the point home.
While I wholeheartedly support your endeavours and am eternally grateful for all the hard work you put into knowledgeably empirically debunking all these contemporary myths about historical bodies and fashion, I have to admit the entirety of this video was ever so slightly overshadowed by the glory of the laundry pot outtake. Glad you're supping the sweet air of freedom! (And seriously, thank you for this video.)
My co-worker once worked in Texas and went to a historical building/museum down there and was shown a dress with what to her seemed and impossibly small waist and was told that women back then would have a rib removed to make this possible. She has had this opinion ever since. Now having no background in history I love videos like this, helps to dispell many of those myths of the impossible waist. I mean, no one wanted surgery back then even when necessary, as you're more likely to die than not, so removing a rib for fashion just doesn't make any sense.
Plus, even if it was true (I doubt it is. I bet we could trace it back to some 1920's hysteria comment.) It was probably ONE INSANE lady who was of very high class. Not so different from... say Kim Kardashian risking her life to get a big butt. That's one person, and almost every woman, and some men wore corsets.
The idea that Victorians, before wide and safe use of anesthetic or antibiotics, would opt for massive surgery is crazy! The mortality rate of such a procedure, if a doctor would even try it, would be astronomical. Even in the modern day there are *maybe* a handful of people that have had this done. Apparently this rumour first started when an actress publicized she had it done as a way to get media coverage around the turn of the century. Very unlikely that it was true.
@@CorwinFound Yeah, that seems rather deadly. And painful. The only thing I've heard about is 1950s and 1960s actresses having their back molars pulled in order to keep a slimmer face for longer and be marketable longer. As opposed to "oh, you're over 25, no more roles for you".
That was the best sponsor bit ever. Also thank you for doing the with and without corset and attachments. It really shows the difference. Much appreciated
I think another thing really important to mention is people were wearing said corsets for much of their lives making their body’s more “squishy” and accepting of the pressure on the obliques making waist reduction much easier and more comfortable. Modern corsets especially in Hollywood and in cinema aren’t necessarily made to measure as they would’ve been and there’s no seasoning or training done for the body or the corset making it stiff and uncomfortable or even painful to often very thin, lean actresses when they are tightlacing for their roles
This is fantastic! And great timing too; I was literally talking to a friend of mine about this yesterday! She was drawing my DnD character and I was talking about differences in various construction methods (lots of panels/seams/yardage vs less, fitted vs cinched with a wait loop, different silhouettes, etc), during which I sent her a couple of your videos (Game of Thrones, etc) - but then mere hours after that conversation you post this video! I do really like that you made the video which took all the advice you have from your other videos and put them - and more - in this single video! Thank you, Bernadette :)
I don't know if Bernadette will see this but: A suggestion for types of videos regular viewers might like --> museum visits, etc! Since London has so much history and not everyone can go there, seeing some nifty museum visits or historical things would be really cool!
I love learning things about Victorian/Edwardian fashion from Bernadette. I also love the shenanigans she goes through for her sponsorship portion. OMG the pot.
So basically you're saying everything I do with my modern shapewear and my wide belts is exactly what Victorian women did. Cuz that's literally what I do. The full body shapewear is loose up top, and tighter around the waist. I generally wear a shaped skirts, or skirts that conform pretty closely to my silhouette. Thinking about getting some under things to go in between my skin and my shapewear to keep it from leaving marks on my skin and keep me from having to wash it all the time. Thank you for this breakdown.❤
![[FREE] Japa x Ryu The Runner x Brandão type beat ~ "FUTURE" / Prod. Cuttie](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/aWLXN0Z5_J8/mqdefault.jpg)
🌏 Get Exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/bernadette It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✌
😂🙂🙂
Best advertisement I have ever seen.
I agree
That was literally the best ad I have ever seen.
getting into a large pot (while almost not getting out again!) is true dedication we appreciate!
Another factor in survivorship bias, is that it's much easier to reuse a large dress to remake into a smaller size than the reverse. You can totally take your plus size cousin's debutante ball gown and remake it for your size 10 self and have spare fabric to alter the style slightly. Meanwhile your size 4 cousin's dress is too nice to make into aprons or children's clothes, we'll just keep it in storage a bit longer in case.
Exactly what I was thinking!
Totally. Add pregnancies and weight fluctuations, and you'll want more adjustability with your garment
I was thinking about my first communion dress. I received it when I was 8 years old, 30 years ago, and I was then on the smaller side. Nowadays, in my country, catholic children usually receive their first communion around 10: my old dress doesn't fit my 10 year old nieces and close relatives. But, it's a very special, very high quality gown (Swiss organdy, hand made by my mom), so I will keep it storaged, even if it was only worn once and will be probably never worn again.
@@limecilla7612 You're hitting upon another version of survival bias that I don't see other people talking about: sentiment. I've long wondered how many of those tiny, very beautifully wrought corsets were part of a wedding ensemble, and were kept for sentimental value even if hardly ever worn afterward, because the woman soon had children and was never able to lace down that far again.
I do have one dress, myself, that I have kept for decades, and it's the last one that my grandmother made for me. It's nothing fancy, but gramma made it, and it's still a style I would consider wearing today.
Lady Rebecca just covered this exact issue with her latest video.
So all of us that stuffed our bras with socks in high school were actually being historically accurate 😂
I resemble that remark. 😂
What? That's a thing? Why would you want to make your chest look bigger?? 🥴 Maybe it's just me very likely being nonbinary (not sure if I am yet or not) but I wish my chest were smaller, if not just completely non-existent. And it's honestly pretty tiny to begin with 😂 and yet I still want it goneee.
@@_veronica_r Weirdly enough, this kind of represents that not only trans people can experience dysphoria
Facts 💯😁
@@_veronica_r Apparently! I had a kid down the street ask if I stuffed my bra when I was 12 (I was already a DD 😭) meanwhile, my mom would only let me get minimizer bras.
Museum bias is totally a thing too. Museums make a choice of what to keep and what to display as well. A very worn plus sized jacket isn't as displayable as a very good condition but tiny dress.
Excellent point 👍
Conservation bias: the garments that are the most preserved are the ones least worn, which of course means that the proportion of the styles that survived is pretty much inverse to what was actually most commonly worn in the period.
@@beth12svist we are lucky that we had people like Hogarth and Sutcliffe recording poorer and working women because their clothing was worn to rags.
P.S. I love looking at garments in smaller regional museums, if they have online collections or put on exhibitions I can attend etc., because it's often a MUCH better look into the clothes of an era than carefully curated fashion exhibitions put on by big name museums that focus just as much on the aesthetics as they do the content. 😉
Also what we mostly see in the museum are garments that belonged to rich people who could afford to throw gown in the box instead of altering it for next teenage girl in the family. So we're talking dresses that belonged to people who could employ every trick in the book to look best. And in case of "special ocasions" gowns, where dicomfort can be put aiside for two hours and vanity hits it's peak, we can expect that some people could opt for more reduction and more padding which gives effect of those riddiculous proportions in most beautiful museum pieces. Working class people tend to prefer more practical and comfortable clothing and tend to have less squishy core (so no tight lacing). Their clothing would be more representative of how people looked in the past size-wise, but they just don't look good enough for display :(
It's probably worth mentioning (for completeness) that all the pencil sketches and paintings are what the artist wanted the subject to look like, not always what the subject actually looked like.
A hand-made image can always have a fashionable figure!
OMG this. Anything can happen in a drawing! It's fiction!
And even today, the fashion sketches lean towards one type of physique. So historically we may look back and assume that women were extremely anorexic, tall and lacking in full busts, etc.,…well, well good thing we have other sources to push back 😅 at that however. Great video! Thanks for the reality check on true Victorian waistlines and more!
Yup! Everyone is seven feet tall and dazzlingly beautiful 😂
That disgusts me
@@DelphineTheWorstBladeEver what
I like how you pointed out that modern actresses who've had to wear very uncomfortable versions of corsets had legitimate reasons to be uncomfortable, and that they're not just being dramatic. It's because they were done dirty by being made to tight lace to reduce their waist instead of padding up the bust and hips to make the illusion of a tiny waist, which would have been how it was done historically. A+ content as always!!
Also I love your ads lmao
Also girls started wearing corsets age seven - that makes the muscles & body adapt. You can then grow up & tight lace & feel snug, not squeezed. If you suddenly try to squeeze a modern actress, with a modern actresses body (i.e. with a middle toned by workouts & no flab nor softness, and a straight figure with no natural waist to speak of) it would be hurting their rump muscles something awful!!
Not only that but there have been accounts of costume designer forced to make a couple sizes too small for the actress to make their waist to appear smaller. It like someone wear 2 sizes small shoes and it not hurting your feet and causing blisters. Improper cloth sizes will always be uncomfortable.
I mean, literally, it's such an idiotic mistake to make! And studios have so many ppl working on costumes... yet they
couldn't have consulted ANY expert in history-dresses to learn about vintage push-ups aka padding & XL ruffles? Like, AGHR! 😵
Who though they were lying about being uncomfortable?
@@annaagapova3583Hopefully none thought they were directly lying, but I can see the frustration at all the misconceptions being directed at them, because they're unintentionally contributing to spreading those misunderstandings, and giving corsets a bad name.
I feel really bad for them, though. A movie shoot can be long. Imagine having to go around for months in the extreme condition they're describing, while having to perform, because you're at work.
Seriously, Hollywood, get a grip!
So one lady I know from a sewing group went to a historical dress display and said "all the waists were so tiny, no wonder they would faint all the time" and I was so overwhelmed with how much I would need to cover in one sentence to quickly disprove that statement I just sat there with my face twitching.
So thank you. I now have nice video to share instead of having an anyurism.
Hahahaha I know that feeling so well! Too much to say that I can't even
I never skip a beat when someone is being wrong about historical fashion, corset bashing in particular lol. Not on my watch!
@@mariashaki89 well, she wasn't wrong about "those waists were tiny". Why because my grandma s wedding dress was impossible for us her grandkids to try fitting in when we were about 16, 17 ish... Because that dress was for her 13-14 ish body (at best)😢, and those were WW1 times when she had lost all her family aside from her small sister, and was marrying a 16-17 ish boy..... Not that he had much family left, a mother and two brothers...
So, it s not like they were properly nourished growing up.
And having spend many summer holidays at the village with them as a kid myself, she wasn't a small woman. a thin woman certainly but wasn't small, as expected from an old village lady who did nearly everything by hand back in the day, and am sure couldn't fit in her wedding dress as an adult while being thin still.
There are times when one should not check my blood pressure!
God this feeling is so relatable
I was working as a museum volunteer and dressed in the 1870s style complete with bustle and corset. The worst disagreement I had was with a male staff member who informed me that women did have ribs removed to have smaller waists. Even after pointing out that the medical proceedings of the time would have made such a thing nearly lethal, he continued to insist it was commonly done. I told him if he could show me medical records of the time period that supported his stance I would eat my corset.
I still have the corset. 😉
There were rumors of models doing that in the 1970s, but I'm not sure it ever really happened, even then.
@@ernststravoblofeld even now, having ribs removed would be a *massive* medical procedure that no doctor would do
I read about removing ribs as a desperate measure to try and ease the breathing of patients with tuberculosis. However I don’t recall reading a lot about patients surviving that treatment.
Removing ribs for fashion (or other things, eg. the Marilyn Manson rumors) have been a perennial rumor forever, it seems. Probably specifically because of how invasive and dangerous it would be. Given all that the Victorians liked to just make up about everything, I wouldn't be surprised if they themselves started rumors about contemporary women removing ribs to get smaller waists (probably accompanied with pontification about how vain women are).
I had an english teacher in school teach this to me as if it was fact. Not surprised to learn she was spouting rumors and nonsense, to be honest.
I feel like the "movies are full of bodies with limited compressible tissue" aspect has been largely overlooked in the corsets-in-media discourse to date, so THANK YOU for putting it front and center.
Yes came here to say that! I hadn’t considered this angle. And of course Hollywood is too obsessed with women being as small as possible that they wouldn’t consider the augmentation aspect of creating the shapes
Also, I can imagine the actresses, directors and everybody being averse to padding out to achieve the same aesthetic… no wonder the actresses complain about the corsets
Yes, this! I've been saying it for ages, that these actresses probably do have horrible experiences, because they are so thin and lean. When you are tightlaced by a dick director because he likes the effect, having never worn a corset, and probably not given enough time by that dick director to season you corset, that minus the knowledge of how to wear a corset well, no wonder they are miserable.
@@EH23831 Which is rather ironic in a society where surgical augmentation is considered a reasonable thing to do, if you're a female who's body is allegedly "required" to be maximally appealing.
@@lynn858 yeah - I reckon surgery would be more painful than a corset…
I love how Bernadette at this point has the complete impression of a history professor giving an online lesson to their students when lounging in her office chair. Including the fact that history professors are absolutely the type of people who would climb into a pot just to make some (?) point.
Who hasn't at one point in their lives climbed into some form of vessel which they later regret, for point-making purposes or otherwise! 😂
Re: proportion - I am a fat person with a lot of my fat in the front part of my belly. When I wear a corset a lot of fat gets pushed to the sides which creates a more dramatic hipspring than I naturally have which makes it look like I'm cinching much tighter than I am. So even without being padded out in the bust and hips, it appears that I'm "tightlacing" when I'm really only laced just as tightly as necessary to keep the corset on. So, even if you look at a corseted body in person - no padding, no photographs - you can't tell how tightly it's laced. Only the wearer can judge if the corset is too tight.
Same! I am 42-32-44 and also kind of... wide and flat, if that makes sense? Broad shoulders and rib cage, it often bothers me how i appear to have "no waist" when looking at myself straight on in the mirror, because my curves are all fully behind or in front of me. But the slight redistribution of corsetry, with only a very negligable 2 inch reduction (which is just barely tight enough to stay on and keep my boobs from falling out) makes me look very dramatically hourglassy from the front view. I just become a LOT thicker through the waist in side view than I am when uncorseted, because my wide-and-flat shape has now become cylindrical. And most of these "how can that be real?" photos and drawings are from the front.
preach. i always tell people that if you have a fair amount of "squoosh" your results will be dramatic. A muscular and dense tissued person and a soft bodied person who start with identical measurements will get VERY different looks with the corset.
i squoosh in the waist but have broad natural shoulders, and it always looked woah dramatic even just... putting a corset on fairly snug but not tight.
yes! same for me, especially since mine is an underbust corset✨
huh thats interesting
ROFL
The most important part of this video to me was seeing the same outfit with and without supporting undergarments. I've never seen it so clearly demonstrated just how big of a difference that really makes. Thank you for your fabulous and educational content~
Even modern clothing can sit very differently depending on the undergarments worn.
That really was a fantastic comparison, I appreciated the inclusion of the "without supporting garments" as well.
If you've not seen it, Nicole Rudolph has a video showing the same dress over different historical undergarments!
Yeah, it's immediately noticeable.
One gets very annoyed upon seeing a beautiful garment look horrible simply because the necessary and appropriate foundation pieces are not worn.
I remember how people freaked out about how tiny Lily James's waist looked in the Cinderella dress, and the production folks had to say very loudly and slowly, that her waist wasn't cinched down or altered with CGI, it just looked tiny because of the giant skirt and big poofy bertha.
Except lilly james spoke at length about using her past experiences with corsets to lace down to a very small waist...
Didn't Lily James mention in an interview somewhere that she had indigestion while wearing the dress??
@@sallym8697 from what I heard she specifically had gone on a diet for the dance scene, but not for the rest of the shots with the dress
@Emi Adachi In the special features, I'm pretty sure she says 17 inches, and could barely manage to get broth down at lunch due to the tight lacing. How much of that is studio-sponsored blather, I leave to the reader's discretion.
@@onemercilessming1342 correct:
“I have naturally a quite small waist,” James told “Nightline.” “And on top of that I have a corset that was pulled me into the inch of my life." James said the corset part of the gown slimmed her down to a 17-inch waist.
Recently, while preparing a History class, I came across an extant corset worn by queen Isabella II of Spain. The interesting part is that she was wearing it the day in 1852 (she was 21) when she was attacked with a stiletto by a disgruntled priest. The corset probably saved her life when the blade struck a baleen and only made a small wound, and the garment still bears the small puncture and bloodstains. So you can add body armour to the list of functions of 19th century corsets.
The piece can be seen in the webpage of the MAN (Museo Arqueológioc Nacional) if anyone is interested.
"attacked -by- with a stiletto by a disgruntled priest" 🥺 that priest must have been worse than disgruntled, risking their life like that 😅😅
Edit: see striked-through word.
@@KrissieMarieEbdane By all accounts he was a peculiar character. He had been exiled because of his liberal beliefs, then he won the lottery and became a loanshark.and the best part: his house was in a place called "Hell's Alley". Indeed he was soon executed and his body and belongings reduced to ashes.
That's one hell of a story.
Jill Bearup did a quick test of the protective qualities of corsets - "I TESTED Corsets vs. Knives (For Science!)". The synthetic whalebone stood up very well to slashing, but was not so effective against stabbing. I mean, it'll absorb some of the thrust, and that'll help, but it's not amazing. (And a stiletto specifically designed for stabbing, potentially even stabbing through mail armor -- so it'll be way more effective at it than the kitchen knife Jill's test used was). So there must have been more going wrong for the priest than simply hitting a bit of baleen for his attack to have been so ineffective
@@jonathan_60503 The queen was wearing a thick mantle that also contributed and the priest may have botched the stab somewhat. He was stopped before attempting a second stab.
Learning about the survivorship bias with small dresses really helps me. I love buying vintage clothing, and even clothes from the 50's, many many MANY vintage shops have these teeny tiny dresses, and while I'm an XS in modern clothes, I feel inadequate next to these tiny dresses. But knowing that oh, these are *really* the dresses that got left behind, got left unworn, *because* they were outliers, reframes it a lot.
I do still want a corset, maybe even more now haha. I love snug clothes, it makes me feel secure. And realizing that women have been padding their busts for 100's of years, there really is no shame in it.
The point of a corset should be to make you feel firm insecure and make your clothes lay the way they you want them to, not to actually reduce your body. Go out and impress them all with your illusion skills🎉
the main reason i like wearing my corset is actually because it feels like a nice hug all day long
+
Survivorship also explains the relative (seeming) lack of plus sized clothes. You can always take fabric off, but it's much more difficult and takes a more skilled hand to add in fabric. Reducing a dress downwards is usually fairly easy while making one bigger is almost unheard of (At least, any more than the natural ease of the seams!). Plus size gowns would have been EARLY on the chopping block to be cut down for more "standard size" garments, which could then themselves be cut into youth sizes. A larger size can also be reduced to a smaller size if there is damage- say a large stain, mothbite holes in a specific area, rot, etc. Those specific areas could be cut away, and the extra used to patch places that need it.
@naminova If you feel "inadequate" next to old dresses, imagine how the rest of us, who are not size XS, feel... (Which is about 99% of women, especially those out of their teens. I too was tiny back then! ;))
Survivorship bias reminds me of a 1950 dress I tried on in an antique shop. I came in hoping to make said dress my prom dress, the clerk told me it was made for "skinny people". (BTW I'm pretty average, 130, 5'6). My mom who is insanely skinny couldn't fit into it. So in conclusion, that dress only survived cause no one can fit in it!
Ha! I have a similar story. I tried on a wedding dress I found and almost got stuck in it 🤣 I was a size 4 at the time. I never thought of survivorship bias.
speaking of prom dresses, when im online vintage shopping I see a lot of very small dresses but I remember that they might have belonged to a teen, but are of course marketed as "XXS" because the majority of their potential customers are going to be adults
This reminds me of the dress “Nancy” wore in the 2005 Oliver Twist movie. The actress literally got the role because they wanted to use a vintage dress that only she was petite enough to fit into.
I was at the Smithsonian National History Museum last month with my family and my mom and aunt were freaking out about how tiny a pair of stays were that they had on display. I tried explaining that 1) those stays could have belonged to a young teenager who hadn't finished growing, 2) they wouldn't have been worn completely laced shut like they were being displayed, and 3) they probably survived in pristine condition because they were so freaking tiny and couldn't be worn by anyone else.
Like seeing a training bra for a 12 year old and assuming that a 26 inch band and AA cup is typical for a modern adult.
I'm also pretty sure even kids wore stays sometimes.
They might have been a sample piece
Survival bias is very real in so many antique clothing!
@@silverkyre In some places they started wearing stays when they learned to walk. And the stays had leader strings on them to assist with walking.
I remember that time when my friends and I wore kimono's in Japan. We were dressed by this incredible lady who explained to us all the history of kimono and name of different garments and layers. And the "fashionable" silhouette in kimono is looking very tubular. No thin waist, no hips, no bust, just a big cylinder. Because I am the curvier, I am the one who had to wear the most padding... to fill all the gaps and "erase" my shapes when my slimmer friends wore very little padding. Its really impressive how it can change all your body proportions to give you the good silhouette.
Reddit downvoted me to Hell when I mentioned the fashionable silhouette for a kimono was a cylinder. I knew I wasn't crazy!
as an avid watcher of manga/anime since young, i was primed to think kimonos were supposed to be worn really tightly so you can see the hourglass figure. so seeing kimonos irl was kinda weird, it seemed 'wrong' ironically. even the more informal yukata had a very tubular shape
As I watched this video, I was often thinking about kimono and yukata, as I have 4. They are my favourites because of my body shape.
@@lakia-chan That just means you're watching/reading more mainstream anime and manga, which is usually geared to the male gaze. If you watch stuff that is meant to highlight the culture, like anything in a more traditional setting, they show the proper kimono silhouette.
I came here to say this exact thing! I’ve learned to dress kimono myself as well and I own a premade waist pad that fills out my waist and fills in on my lower back too cause of my butt lol. It comes made with a handy elastic band and hook to secure it on be comfortable haha. It’s popular to pad around the upper bust near the shoulder too. They make kimono bras with pockets to add padding where you need it even (I don’t own one of those tho.)
Also apparently having a bigger head can look better when dressing kimono (esp with Japanese hair style or wig on) just cause of the kimono layers and stuff!
My grand mother, who is now 92, and my grandpa were photographers. Officially, it was HE, the artist. Because, men, sexism, 'but women have only home making skills', etc...
But. In reality, he took the photos, and she did the manipulations. She'd even skin tones, touch up textures, etc.
And, she'd "contour correct" silhouettes.
It's funny that we forgot it now, when it was still used but a few decades ago. It's as if we assume anything before the age of the computer was not capable of such wizardry.
fuckin ay! when i was younger i was super into forensic science and i got a book from the 1980s about forensics that was written for children- and there is an entire chapter in that book about how to doctor negatives using paint in order to fake something in a photo like a ghost or something. This is information that is accessible today, you can find these books that mention it, and we just have this total cultural amnesia about it. People from the past whether its long past centuries or even the rememberable pre-digital age are much much cleverer than we today give them credit for.
My great grandfather had a photography studio. When I was very young he took my photograph and since color photography film wasn't a thing yet, he painted my portraits. (no he didn't alter the image...just added color). When I was in college I took a photography class where we did manipulation on our images. Burning in the background, placing objects over the photopaper to keep the image lighter, etc. Fun times!
My 1984 senior high school photo had to be extensively retouched because my acne was so bad. The final photo gives the illusion of flawless skin, which I certainly didn’t have.
The (US) National Gallery of Art had an amazing exhibit on image manipulation pre-photoshop!
My aunt has a black and white photo of herself which was made in a photo studio and coloured by hand. It was probably 45 years ago. She says they changed the colour of her jumper ftom red to green. I think they also smoothed her skin texture, it totally looks like a modern pic with a filter😂
My Grandmother was a 1920's flapper. She naturally had a 20" waist before she wore her corset. She explained that the corset was never to make you smaller but to create a neat line and also because it kept you warm when you wore lightweight silk. As an aside - she was 5' 1" and by her own admission had anorexia and weighed 80lbs.
I didn't think flappers wore corsets... 🤔 Just a simple 'bust bodice' to keep their bosom from bouncing about when vigorously dancing the Charleston!
@@221b-Maker-Street a lot, if not most women, wore an underbust corset in the 20s. they bridged the gap between the corset and the girdle so they often had elastic panels, closed with zips, and what we would now know as bra hooks. overbust corsets were still around but were largely marketed towards ‘stout’ women. corsetry didn’t disappear in the 20s, it simply changed its name to stay modern and marketable
@@dylancopley-dunn6326 Yes, I'm thinking particularly of flappers, though. Young girls - or very young women - usually straight up and down with more boyish figures. My grandma had a Symington side-lacer which is in a box somewhere... 😊
20” waist is insane! I’m 5’3” and weighed 85lbs in high school and my waist was 23.5” at that time. I’m just over 100lbs now after many years spent recovering from Ed, and my waist is now 25.5”. I have more of a rectangle/athletic build, though, but I still can’t even imagine 20”. That’s wild! She must’ve been an hourglass.
@@221b-Maker-Street They were called Liberty Bodices over here. A bit like an elastic panelled camisole with brushed cotton lining. It smoothed your shape, and yes, kept you warm!
The survivorship bias of smaller extant pieces makes sense when you consider that larger gowns could easily be taken in for different / changing aesthetic but smaller gowns could not. Another excellent video! ❤
Love the debunking of the corset myth, but Bernadette stuck in a large stock pot is going to be on replay in my brain for a while. Pure joy!
Yes, but WHY does Bernadette own a 25ish gallon stock pot? Inquiring minds want to know. I seriously doubt she has ever made even 1 gallon of stock in her life. Is it a dyeing tub for full bolts of cloth?
Same, honestly. Stock pot sizes now go: 6qt, 12qt, 20qt, Bernadette. Fantabulous.
@Scott2000 Bernadette is quite "science" minded. I am sure it is either/or for dyeing or science !
Didn't she use it when she was testing Victorian cleaning products or recipes a while back? 🤔
Sweetums child size
As a person who is very squishy and hourglass shaped to start with (because I'm plus sized in a more pear shaped format)... wearing a tight laced corset is the only way I've ever been able to comfortably wear a corset. If I wear a properly fitted corset more loosely laced, it doesn't sit properly on my waist or support large skirts without them hanging off my hips. And no part of tight lacing into a corset is painful for me as long as I'm wearing good fitted garments. Sitting down is... unpleasant, because I can't bend the way most modern chairs want, but everything else is fine.
(I promise this isn't some sort of weird flex. For modern eyes, I still look "fat" when tight laced. But if you aren't thin to start with YMMV with corsets depending on your specific body. Even people with more fat vary in how the bones underneath want to compress or not.)
I also want to say, I'm always extremely confused how actresses can't seem to understand that you breath up with your ribcage while laced in, not out through your belly. Obviously this isn't great for projecting your voice, but it's comfortable once you get used to it. Anybody who's ever been 8 months pregnant can attest that you don't suffocate when your lungs can't go down.
I like this comment. This shows that clothes are meant to fit people and not the other way around. Also, it so cool that you have an hourglass body. It’s rare to find someone with it naturally. I bet you look awesome in a corset.❤
i kinda thought models and actors would know about the rib cage breathing thing, it accentuates your breasts over your belly so there's probably a lot of situations where they'd manually switch to rib breathing right?
If there's one point for the actresses, is that most probably they don't know/forget about upper breathing.
I literally had no idea about belly breathing until one music class when I was a child. The teacher told a us about both methods and how belly breathing can be used to play flute (it was a very basic class lol) and I was blown away.
Needless to say, I didn't think about relating this to corsets until now.
So probably is a thing that most people don't even think about...
Absolutely, it totally depends on body composition. I'm a relatively small person but I still have enough squish in my waist that I find some reduction more comfortable than none
That's properly fitted to your body type imo
Something that I'm glad is getting more touched on recently in the costuming spheres is how a lot of these historical trends were really about how to achieve a fashionable look/silhouette with your body as the starting point, as opposed to how nowadays it seems like the body is what's fashionable, not the clothes, so if you don't look like what shape's popular right now, you'll almost certainly feel really bad about yourself for not looking "right" in clothes that were never designed with your shape in mind -plus the added debacle of "universal" sizes and cuts that will never be flattering on all body types because that's literally impossible
its so true. we recently went back to heronie chic from the curvier trend. (not to mention the whole bbl / buccal fat removal trends.) its so infuriating! your body shouldnt be a trend!
Excellent point! It’s interesting though, that the same strategies are used today, in addition to plastic surgery. Choosing clothes that “flatter”. 😬
@@janet6114 that's when mass manufacturing started out.
Feelings aren’t real. Self delusion is dangerous
@@paulashe61 you sober?
The comparison of you in the outfit with and without the padding was very helpful. Would have loved a split screen. Thank you for also debunking the myth that the waist is always the slimmest part of the torso. As someone whose waist measurement is 2" larger than their underbust, this myth has done a lot of damage to my body image.
I just didn’t see a diff besides her looking flatter without the underneath stuff
She looked thin still becuz she IS very thin
Watching this I realized I’ve quite literally never seen larger women from this time period and I cannot tell you how the entire segment on reduction healed something DEEP in my psyche. Especially realizing I could definitely achieve that “ideal” Victorian body type with my current physical body if I just laced up a properly made corset… I know what I’m getting myself for my birthday…
@@Givebackthescarf That's a great point. I think for me I meant more that I didn't even know it was something I was missing until it was presented as an option. I had never thought about the fact that I hadn't seen larger people from older times because I'm not used to seeing people who look like me now. Why would I expect the past to be any different? I didn't realize I needed to see it until I did. It's not that I wouldn't have gone seeking it, its just that I couldn't have because it wasn't even something that occurred to me until just then. Does that make sense? Sorry for rambling lol.
I think about survivorship bias all the time, i even told someone about it in a museum with teeny tiny mannequins setup they were absolutely teenager sizes and I was like, I mean didn't you save some old clothes in case you had a teenager one day who would like them? She had never even considered that!
My mum literally saved her high school clothes for me and I loved them. I was always obsessed with the Cold War so being dressed like an 80s teenager was nifty and I looked just like the main character on my favourite old show set in the end of the Cold War. And to think, if she hadn't thought her daughter might want those clothes one day they'd have just been more textiles in a landfill.
Even today, the sizes and cuts available in the Jrs section are different from the women's section. Sure they are "young women" but bodies still do a lot of growing and changing during adulthood.
I have my prom and wedding dresses stored, even though I have changed a lot. If someone was judging my adult size by those, they would be very wrong!
My daughter died in a car accident when she was 16. I saved a lot of her best clothes and still have them 20 years later. Its not a fashion thing.
my mum most certainly didn't do that for me! I don't think it ever would have occurred to her, as a teenager, that 35 years later her daughter might be interested in her clothes. the only thing she kept was her wedding dress. it was a good thing, too, because I'm a completely different build to her and her things wouldn't have fitted me.
I haven't saved any of my clothes either, they all went in the bin or got donated, depending on if I grew out of them or wore through them first. I wouldn't have anywhere to store them, anyway.
Now I've got an image of some historic woman gushing about how nice her daughter looked at her first adult party and how they simply must save the dress. Like it's a prom dress or a graduation cap.
As a not-tiny person who wore Elizabethan clothes every spring and summer for 13 years, I appreciate the discussion of the illusion aspects of undergarments. People always wanted to know how I could do what I did in such "tight" clothes. I always said it was easy if you had undergarments that actually fit you. Dancing, walking, carrying things, and running were all easily accessible in properly made clothes over correctly fitted structural garments.
Just popping in to add my existence as a second long-term renn faire performer who can in fact dance, sing, run, and do all sorts of things while corseted. I also personally happen to be a large and squishy person with a 10 inch difference between my waist and bust whilst totally uncorseted, and it's easy enough to pad the extra 5 inches onto the bottom. The biggest issue with breathing in off-the-rack modern corsetery is actually how much it tries to take off my upper ribcage and bust, because off-the-rack tends to assume that all women are pear shaped. Custom made and properly fitted is no issue at all!
Kentwell?
I worked ladies lingerie back in the late 1980's. I had to take a class in properly measuring and fitting people for their undergarments. I was so surprised how we are really no longer taught how to find properly fitting clothing anymore and how many of us are wearing the incorrect size for our body shape. Fashion starts with a proper foundation.
FACTS!!!! i wear a corset for horseback riding (it used to be my moms so its already broken in lol) and it helps SO much with proper posture after its been about 6 hours in the saddle....Still can hop on and get off with ease, not to mention rounding cattle! granted, it was a "work corset" made of mainly stiff cotton and thick thread with deer antler 'bones' instead of plastic bones. My mom made it waaay back when she was 55 (about 20~ years ago) and it's only needed patching a couple of times. It also works great for paintball fights to avoid bruising if you wear it underneath XD My brothers were always so salty I never had purple abs like them
I find it quite amusing as an hourglass shaped autistic woman, that so many actors find corsets tight, uncomfortable, restrictive etc. even to the point one ‘jokes’ about panic attacks… I wear corsets basically everyday because the pressure of a well fitted, made for me (by me) corset helps me to regulate emotions and prevent panic attacks. Thanks to Chanel’s like Bernadette and other (Abby Cox, Nicole Rudolph, Morgan Donner et all) I braved teaching myself how to sew and then sew a corset, something I never thought I could do! They have quite literally changed my life. Bring back the corset!!!❤❤❤ ⌛️
Omg also autistic and when I just made a mock-up of a corset to test the pattern, I loved it so much I didn’t even want to take it apart to salvage the bones/busk etc 😂 It feels like a constant hug lol, or when I would pick my dog up and sit with her on my lap.
Kind of like a weighted blanket?
Congratulations on learning your new skills. Thank you for mentioning the other channels, I'm going to check them out.
So happy that you were able to find such an excellent source of support (pun intended!).
I'm neither autistic nor deal with ongoing anxiety issues, but over the years of corset wearing I found that it absolutely had a calming effect for me. I remember a specific time I was quite upset about something and my boyfriend suggested I put on my corset. I did and felt immediately improved. He was very smug about being perceptive enough to have noticed the effect. lol
In the 80s we wore very square T-shirts tucked into our slim at the waist jeans.
First you’d tuck it tight and then raise your shoulders to pull just enough fullness out. I wore a wider leather belt. This accomplished what you demonstrated.
I had never even considered the illusion this created. I often wore shoulder pads too. I’m not going to run screaming back into the 80s, but it makes me think.
I wore stretchy waist pants, having 3 babies from 83-89 🤣
My husband asked me to wear a pair of jeans pls. He forgot what I looked like in them!
I told him I hadn’t had a pr that fit since a few mos post-baby 1 hahahahaha
My thyroid tanked postpartum baby 1.
Thing a lot of people seem to forget is that there were people back then who already had natural hourglass figures who then chose to lace down. From what I've seen from my own experience wearing corsets, and from others with a similar body type to mine (natural hourglass), we tend to be squishier in the middle and as we've got the figure naturally, it only takes a small amount of reduction to make it look really extreme. When I was 34", 24", 34" I wore my 20" corsets and then got some made to close at 18" and I don't think I looked particularly extreme back then with only a 4" reduction (wore with a 2" gap). But when I gained weight on meds, it all went to my boobs and hips (unsurprisingly given my figure type) and it became possible to reduce only an inch or two but get quite an extreme looking shape. My boobs and hips are now 14" larger than my waist before I put a corset on. If I reduce by 2" (which is easy peasy) then I've got a 16" hipspring. Which is an amount considered "tightacing" proportions back in the day. But my waist is squishy, even more so now, so its easy enough to reduce 4" and get an 18" hipspring. And that's all with staying within the realms of light levels of waist reduction. I would have to go custom to go any tighter (only reason I can get a 4" reduction is my off the rack corsets have hip ties to let the hips out enough to give an even lacing gap in back). But I imagine I could easily manage 6" reduction with little issue if I did given that I could almost do that with a week's worth of wearing every day back when I had a 24" waist.
I would not be surprised if some of the actresses famed for their extreme figures were natural hourglasses who then laced down by just a normal amount and got accused of tightlacing by those around them. And if you add on padding too.... well...
That is highly likely. Body type hugely influences silhouette.
I’m a very hefty lady but found some nice steel spring boned corset. I can comfortably squeeze in 6 inches and already have an enormous bosom (natural J Cup) When I slap on that corset people are amazed how I look. Every thinks I lost weight. Nope. Illusion through reduction.
I also have an hourglass figure, or something approximating an hourglass, 31" 24" 36", but am very short, with a short waist and firm abdomen. I can't lace down at all, maybe an inch if I really wanted to.
@@Givebackthescarf I'm not saying that I can't achieve a dramatic hourglass figure at all, with proper padding I could. But I have almost no fat in my midsection, it's all firm muscle, and there is very little space between th bottom of my ribs and the top of my hip bones. So, at my waistline, there is nothing to make smaller. It just doesn't move. Whether or not I can make my waist smaller by corsetting has no bearing on whether I have an hourglass figure or not. An hourglass figure refers to a ratio of measurements.
Talking about the Regency period, there were tons of interviews from the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice where all of the actresses gush about how comfortable the corsets or stays were, though I also wish to point out how not thin the actresses in that miniseries were. No, not large either, just not tiny.
One reason I prefer the show to the Keira Knightley film is that everyone actually seems to be wearing clothes that fit them instead of just weird small baggy dresses 😂
@@jasminv8653 THANK YOU
@@jasminv8653 not to mention the show is almost word for word the book.
oh I so loved this series and the actors all looked 'normal', aka not just tiny whiny body types. moreover the hair also seemed period appropriate, which they don't do in most movies because it's not 'pretty'. I guess it's time to revisit this gem.
Another reason it's my favorite! You can see the authentic fit of the clothes.
Your "corsets weren't worn that way" videos have seriously helped me so much! I often wear my corseted costumes for an entire day and used to be incredibly uncomfortable by the end. Padding is a glorious addition 😁
I cried several times watching this video. I am a naturally round person, and generally have given up on pursuing several of my dreams because of it. You mentioning that a surviving dress had a waist measurement of 37.5 inches blew me away, because that is my waist when wearing a comfortable corset. I rarely see myself in fashion, both modern and historical, but knowing that people like me have always existed, it's so freeing.
Im naturally tiny person, but currently gaining weight and will get pregnant in few years. Videos like these help me so much to overcome my body dismorphia.
You and I both need to just make our own clothes. 😊 let them say something
Of course there has always been people bigger. But they were usually the wealthy people. Most people were tiny from hard work and lack of food. A old weight loss remedy was to actually on purpose "take" worms. Can't remember which kind. But when the desired weight was obtained they would take deformed. Very disgusting and horrible for you.....but that's what they did.
And really, it us chubby people's fault and we can't act the victim. We simply like to eat and don't have the self control skinny people have. Albeit some are born to be skinnier over others.
@@glorygracek.1841 Hear,hear !
Of course! Things like body type are inherited. There are round people today because there were round people in the past thriving, marrying and having babies. ;)
This video is so amazing, thank you.
a) corsets are comfortable if you wear the right shape and size for your body
b) corsets work better on bigger bodies
c) it's all about ~proportionizing~
I work in a store that sells 1950s fashion, and gothic clothing - including corsets. They're not historically accurate corsets but the principles you listed apply nontheless and I wish more people would know about them!
Especially bigger women are often lead to believe (eg by the movies/actresses you mentioned) that they are not the right size to wear historical clothing or corsets.
THANK YOU so much, I love your work.
I watched a video about shoes and how people say we have bigger feet than people 100+ years ago and you mentioned survivorship bias and the woman in that video said something similar that the smaller sizes survived because they were usually unsold sizes or hardly worn and the average sized shoes were so worn they were thrown out. So the size 5 shoes survived but the size 8 didn't. She also mentioned how the shoes fabric stretched a lot so when not filled with a real foot it looks extremely small.
I think the most interesting part in this is that these styles of clothing with corsets were MUCH more forgiving and had much more of room for being comfortable and had more support to the body than modern clothing that does literally nothing for your body, but people tend to think the complete opposite. The fact that all of those garments were made to fit a specific person and now most of us have to use the "universal" shapes and sizes in clothing should speak for itself, but for some reason it does not and it is funny
Literally. Victorian era: wear garments perfectly tailored to your measurements and designed to give the illusion of your desired proportions. Modern day: here’s a crop top and some shorts sized several inches away from your actual measurements, and if that doesn’t look good on you well sucks for you I guess
@@skylark7921 yup literally
I sang opera for many years, and had the great good fortune to experience a custom, made just for me, corset. I've also had to wear many 'off the shelf' corsets, and the difference is night and day. I think I still have welts in my armpits from a too long in waist corset. A well fitting corset is not only comfortable, it actually can assist a singer's breathing technique, by ensuring good posture, especially when sitting.
I did high school choir in a corset (had back problems and couldn't afford a proper brace) for over a year. My friends had a "wtf" moment when I did Kate Bush karaoke in a corset during a holiday party.
Right? I sang at my own wedding while wearing a corset. Absolutely no problems with breath control!
On major movie productions, they do custom make the costumes for the leads.
yes! I often practice singing in corset-like blouses/vests when I'm needing a bit of a posture reminder.
Can I ask how you get a good low breath in a corset? Do you make sure it's not laced too tight?
I've heard other opera singers say they actually help as you have something to push against with your belly. It's so interesting!
I was in a medical corset due to a spinal injury, and that thing was MEANT to restrict and stiffen and support my spine, and it was STILL comfortable. I was able to move and breathe and exist 24/7 without difficulty, even though it was designed to restrict me. I was still able to function properly wearing a sheath of plastic and metal buckled tight around my waist. The whole "corsets shift your organs and make you faint" is so ridiculous!
I suspect you and I wore a similar brace. I have scoliosis and wore one for three and a half years, for 23 hours a day. I hated it but got on with life. Organs stayed in place!
your body know where your organs are supposed to go! That's why surgeons just shove them back in when they're done. The body puts them to their right place. You're right, it is ridiculous! I wish people thought better of their bodies, your brain (or is your brain yourself?) may be the smartest but the rest is smart too.
I found an article several years ago, written in the 1850-1860 time period (with graphic pictures)about what wearing a corset from the time one was four years old did to one's body.
Amelia Bloomer raged about women wearing tight corsets.
Somehow I don't think they were wrong.
It speaks to how negligent and toxic Hollywood is to their actresses. That they would rather hurt an actress for "historical accuracy" rather than find another way around which is ironically more historically accurate
@@parkerbrown-nesbit1747 I have a recollection of similar articles being mentioned in a RUclips video before (maybe not one of Bernadette’s though) and I believe it was mentioned how they would’ve been written by men making assumptions (possibly on poor medical basis) and also based on very rare extreme cases where a few people may have tight laced but it was certainly not the norm, so should probably be taken with a pinch of salt. But, as someone that wore a medical brace at age 5 to prevent my body healing/developing scoliosis following surgery on my back, I could imagine if a similar item was worn incorrectly while the body is still developing you could have the opposite effect, though I wold really hope people didn’t do that to kids but I guess there will always be outliers… Overall, I had a similar experience to the above commenters in it being a constant snug feeling but not painful and to my knowledge I have no recurrent problems due to wearing it at that time (now 26)
I love that, you’ve been doing this for literal years … I’ve been WATCHING for literal years and yet you continue to teach me things.
“The waist measurement on this dress measures 37 and a half inches.”
That. That’s my waist. I knew they weren’t all tiny but I’ve had so much trouble seeing myself in Victorian clothing and feeling like I’d done it right cause I couldnt fully put down the tiny waist image in my head because of all the pictures
Can confirm that illusion is extremely helpful in this regard! My wedding dress wasn't corseted and I didn't wear any shapewear (i.e., a girdle or something like it) underneath, but it was (I think this is the right term) a princess cut, and had a very full skirt and a crinoline that I wore underneath. That, coupled with a wide scoop neckline and big puffy sleeves - suffice to say that my very average waistline of 29 inches (on a 5'4" person) was made to look very small! This trickery can be super effective. I think we mostly see it today in wedding dresses, though.
Even with "normal" every day clothes, you can illusion a lot. Like, I have a bit of a stomach, wide hips and average bust. So I tend to wear pants at my natural waist or a bit higher to smooth out the stomach a bit, I tuck in my top and floof it out at the front and bam, my stomach is gone and my hips don't appear as large anymore since my bust no appears propertionally bigger. A belt now emphasizes my waist to appear smaller. It works even better with dresses and skirts, wear it at the waist, bam, where's my stomach gone.
Right now is actually a good time to find the type of pants that fit you, since so many types of jeans and pants are in stores right since fashion is doing things. Different bodies need different clothes.
@@ateisate7270 Notice how ‘streetwear’ has grown more popular. We like looser fitting clothes for the same reason that people from other eras applied padding.
@@emmakane6848 ɓ u⁵⁵
I hope a costumer for a costume drama reaches out to you and your colleagues for advice, someday. I'm truly tired of seeing actresses get damaged because of inaccuracy.
Edit: best example of survivorship bias are the airplanes that came back from being shot at. People were saying that we had to better protect the areas that had been hit by hundreds of bullets, but what ended up saving more people and planes was beefing up the areas that none of the returning planes had been damaged in. BECAUSE ALL OF THE DESTROYED PLANES HAD BEEN SHOT THERE AND DISINTEGRATED.
I love that example of survivorship bias - there's an accompanying illustration too, that shows a plane silhouette just absolutely peppered with bullet holes, and then you stop and think... and it sinks in that THOSE are the planes that made it back to base. And then you get it.
@@MichaelAlthauser One comparison I saw someone make in response to that post was that injuries from car accidents increased in number after seatbelts were widely implemented. Because without seatbelts, those injuries would have been deaths instead.
@@dbseamz A similar think happened with a guy in the US commenting on how number of cyclists in the Netherlands who had been injured had grown, so cycling was more dangerous in the Netherlands and the US was safer. Not stopping to consider the fact that 2 year olds and their great grandparents all cycle. The rise in injuries was from the cyclists over the age of 75, who kept cycling thanks to electric assist bicycles, instead of stopping to cycle due to their physical limitations.
Yea,except,I *think* that's what she already does for a living
That's a fantastic analogy.
One of the most egregious things about controlling one's silhouette is that the whole padding is still being continued and it's been an uninterrupted practice in it since the middle of the 1800's in a very specific theatrical genre: Drag.
Both drag queens and kings know exactly how to alter one's silhouette to achieve incredible illusions of waist reduction and if you watch Drag Race it's so easy to see them doing it. And yes, it's been uninterrupted since the Victorian Era because it's when the concept of drag balls started happening and became a staple of queer culture.
That is a brilliant point. Drag artists are often using every single trick in the Victorian playbook to achieve the illusion of feminine proportions. Corsets, padding, clothing proportions, etc.
Violet Chachki would be the tiniest waist drag queen I've seen.
Yes! I'm an AFAB queen and don't pad my hips or bum because I already have a lot there, but I typically wear two push-up bras at once in drag, plus a full body girdle, to lift and enhance my bust.
PROPORTIONIZING! xx
i came here to say just that! very well said
I recently read the book 'How to be a Victorian', and, although I thought all information was accurate, it didn't really mention these methods in the chapter about garments, but mainly explained that corsets were often used to reduce your waist inch by inch over the years and that many women fainted from the practice. I feel like now I have a full picture of what it was actually like! Thank you!
My sister is a midwife and did a course last year about traditional midwifery and was totally stunned about the fact that her training in university was kind of slimmed down (like the waists of those thin actresses you could say).
BECAUSE she learned that a corset was a very tradional way to help pregnant women. NOT to prevent them from breathing, NOT to make them better looking, NOT to opress them but instead to help them breathing and help them carry the weight of their baby and their belly!
So I absolutly believe you when you say a corset should make you comfortable and help you, especially during straining periods like pregnancy or hard work, when training your muscles just is not enough.
The thing that always baffles me is the amount of underlayers that we lost in the span of around 40 years. When I was a child in the late 80s/early 90s, my mom still wore a lot of undergarments (bra+panties as a base, pantyhose, an elastic girdle, an undershirt and THEN the actual outer clothes, mostly padded at the shoulders), and my maternal grandmother also wore a corset AND a garter belt with stockings, because she felt uncomfortable with a pantyhose and had scoliosis (and so do I). Growing up I was taught that, as a woman, I had to wear a lot of layers to be proper, but I ditched everything as soon as I started to wear a bra in middle school, because I always felt very uncomfortable (and the woolen undershirt gave me rashes, especially when the weather was warmer, which is pretty often in Southern Italy, where I live). It took me decades to unlock the secret of augmenting the other parts of your silhouette to hide or modify your appearance, just because we now do it to our actual bodies instead of our clothes - in my case, I have pretty thick legs compared to my upper body, and it stopped being such an eyesore for me (personal taste valid only for my own body) when I started training in an actual sport and my arms and shoulders got bigger.
Still, I despise wearing too many layers of clothing, and I found my way to my peace of mind, but learning the techniques and crafts that our ancestors used is so informative and educational, because, as I said, we tend to forget it even when we saw it in our actual lifetime.
Bonus: my mom is now I her 60s and ditched most of her undergarments when I refused to wear them because I found them uncomfortable. She agreed with me.
Add in that the average global temperature has risen about 1 full degree Celsius *just* since the 1980s, and all those layers gotta go.
@@alleecmo Doubly so because we often wear partially or completely polyester, which is also not remotely breathable. The world’s hotter and we’re wearing clothes that retain more heat. It’s like we’re all sweat boxing.
@@GuiSmith And we have central heating and air conditioning. I can't imagine wearing so many layers. My place is right now 65F and I'm in a cotton T shirt and cotton pyjama pants. And cotton ankle socks. For sure unacceptable for certain classes in Victorian times but probably just fine for us peasants. When it comes to comfort, I'd rather be a peasant even if actually I'm not.
Plus the advent of washing machines makes it a lot easier for clothing manufacturers to convince us to buy more clothing (more sales) made with far less material (lower material costs), especially when you throw planned obsolescence into the mix
I think this trend began earlier in the US. In the 70s my mother only had the base of bra and panties. Plus pantyhose if she wore a dress, which was seldom.
Okay seeing the difference with and without underpinnings was HUGE, total mindset shift regarding historical costuming. Bernadette, you continue to be the best costume RUclipsr out there. Never change!
11:50 & 12:40 is indeed a bit like the difference btw just coming home and immediately removing belt and bra
Thank you for always adding women of color to your historical fashion-y reference photos! That inclusion is so important to all your viewers, but especially your viewers of color. We love an inclusive queen! 🎉
As a white person I love it too!
@@CorwinFound So do I, I love anyone who promotes inclusivity and peace.
It is very very important and I absolutely love it too! I’m black and often don’t see us included in historical fashion but I’m like…we were there! We wore clothes! There’s lots of photos of us!
A week late to the party but I wanted to mention that tightlacing is also something one did gradually. If someone WAS into high fashion and tightlacing, that's not something they just decided to do one day and get an eight inch reduction in their waist. You slowly lace more tightly over time, and slowly increase how long you wear it for. Hell, a friend of mine who started wearing a corset regularly who *wasn't* trying to increase reduction found that over time she was more comfortable with it tighter and for longer periods simply because her body had gotten used to how to move in it.
As someone who used to be very into (real) corsets and tightlacing and I am a size 0, I do usually get my waist an additional 5in smaller for that 15in difference. But it isn't comfortable to wear for long periods of time. Having more weight will actually make it easier to tightlace comfortably.
'Survivor Bias' is a fun thing! My brother noted after having kids: there is one diaper size that kids leap through (so don't stock many of those) and again in elementary school one pants size that were easy to find in resale shops in great condition because kids zoomed through that particular moment faster than wear.
Let's not forget another form of survivor bias here, the Petty Dress. A dress whose sole purpose was to allow the Duchess of Here to subtly imply that the Countess of There had put on a lot of weight because the Count was dallying with the milk maid and the Countess had comfort eaten herself out of her dresses. The Duchess of Here only wore that dress once because she was only willing to/had to suffer through the one evening laced to hell and back, so it looks like it's only been worn for five hours. It's a no expenses spared dress that's practically untouched and makes an excellent museum piece. We don't have full provenances for all of these pieces, so we can't be sure whether the dress was meant to be comfortable attire for a lovely party with friends or weaponized fashion for one critical evening.
Never forget how petty people can be.
Like a husband hunting dress, too!
Yup. I'm quite sure, there were very spectacular (and equally uncomfortable) dresses made and worn exclusively to slight/impress/cause jealousy etc.
Because...human nature and women getting into physical altercations being frowned upon 😎.
If you can't punch the b**ch in the face, you gotta at least look fancier then her!
I have had parts of this discussion with friends. As I do historical dance, I end up being the 'ladies maid' to get my dance partner (a renowned dance historian) dressed. And I helped build my wife's corset. This video will be sent to anyone who spouts the insanity. And as my daughter is now getting into the same, we should have fun building her garments to reality.
As a woman who has had weight issues all my life, I’m so grateful for your video. I was told by my mother I might want to consider wearing a contraption known as. ‘Girdle’. Whalebone was not used on these torture devices. I gave this traditional method of looking shapely by sophomore year of college.
Btw, I adore how intellectually gifted you present your view point.
You actually taught me to wear a corset properly. Adding volume to other areas and not suffocating in the waist ❤
Don't forget that even without waist reduction, a 34" oval and a 34" circle look very different from the front. People are naturally more of an oval, but when the corset redistributes the shape into more of a circle, they look smaller--even if the measurement hasn't changed at all!
true, im so much wider than i am...um deep...? i guess? that sounds weird to put it that way
Much like @Valleyviolet, I am a "plus" sized person with the natural +10/waist/+15 measurements. As a young woman, I had a 21-inch waist, but I still had this proportion. On Easter Saturday, my son and I walked about two miles (to our local park for an Easter Egg hunt, Then to lunch and back home). I was in full 1875 regalia; corset, cage bustle, etc. It was the most comfortable walk I have ever been on. (Lunch was a bit of a mess when I gave my son his drink and got gravy and mashed potatoes all over my bodice). I do have two actual points to make.
1) When lay folk talk about Victorian clothing, why do they always seem not to remember the OG, herself, Queen Victoria?!?!?!? After nine children and her husband passing, she ate her feelings and got huge. Being 5'1" and having a corseted waist of about 36' makes for a large person. Many of her gowns still exist because SHE WAS THE EVERLOVING QUEEN!!!
2) Mae West. For those who know, that's all I need to say. Mae West was the Queen of body illusion and photo manipulation. Even at the start of her career, she used corsetry, floof, big hats, and platform shoes to look taller and more petite. During her film career, she would have her clothing and costumes cut smaller in the front and larger in the back (say a modern size six in the front and an 18 in the back), then strategically place her thumb on the "side seam" to show the air brushers where her waist "should" be, If she didn't like the picture, she would take a hole punch to the face, so I could not be used.
OMG, the thumb thing makes me giggle! 😂 I think we forget that a lot of these Victorian & Edwardian ladies whose photos are most reproduced as part of the "tiny waist" debate were Professional Beauties, high society ladies, or music hall stars & similar... The equivalents of today's movie stars, Kardashians, adult entertainment personalities, models & so on. Manipulating their public image was big business for them too! As with all of history, context is everything...
I'm 5'4 and have queen Victoria's waist. I'm not ashamed. Q u e e n lol
I would love to see a video looking at how plus sized women in regency, Edwardian and Victorian eras made period fashion work for their bodies. Bonus idea: I’ve been binging Kaz Rowe’s videos and watched their video on Rube Waddel and how he once fought a teammate for wearing a straw hat after Labor Day and it made me wonder what were the fashion faux paws(?) (I can’t spell apologies) of these eras?
That reminds me of a photo from, I guess, the 1880s on which a larger busted woman had a cup sitting on her bust. Shared it to my friends with the caption "life goals" :D
Love both those ideas and Kaz too! Additionally I think it’s faux pas but I could be wrong lol
There's another RUclips out there whose name just won't come to mind - she's done videos showing how much a corset's shape helps with wearing garments in different eras. There's some eras where without the corset you can see how unflattering a garment woukd be, and some where actually getting a dress on without the corset is a monumental struggle.
I wish I could remember her name because she does some really great videos.
Think she has longer red hair and maybe a southern accent? She's definitely American.
Maybe someone else can direct you to her if I dont manage to recall and update this comment. It's not quite what you're looking for bit it's interesting!
Edit: She's been mentioned below by Adri in the comments - Lady Rebecca Fashions
It’s faux pas, which I believe is French for “wrong step.” Someone please correct me if I’m wrong!
Everyone was custom made or customized. Having that extra fullness in the hip and shoulders would make that silhouette easier to achieve.
(I'm a tomboy)and after this I've just realized something I can do (after watching the illusion part) to make myself have more of a flat non curvy physique. I can wrap (not tightly) a thin piece of fabric around my waist so it dips in less and reduces the size of my bust. I know its the total opposite of this video Bernadette, but thankyou :)
I'd recommend looking at shapewear to get some structural ideas! Control top underwear/bike shorts would likely work for what you're trying to achieve, and you could try a 50s style girdle (or something similar) if you find that more comfortable. (Ps. I'm a hourglass figured transmasc myself who loves some shapewear, girdles and corsets to go with my binders/sports bras 😉)
@@doctorwholover1012 oh thanks so much 🙏🏻😊
P.S I also love doctor who
If you don't want to go the shapewear route, and just want to stick with the fabric around the middle. Remember from art class, optically dark colours send to the back, light colours bring to the front (cue the black and white pictures that look 3D). From my bad fashion sense, shiny fabrics catch light and work like light colours and bring to the front. (I tried to look thinner by wearing a fabric that was shiny, I looked twice the size!). So, if you wear a plain black tshirt and trousers and wear a shiny orange band flat to your body around your waist, you likely would have a big looking belly. Also, if you go to a fabric or shop known for sewing, you may be able to find something that looks like a piece of fabric but is very stiff. (There may be several with different stiffnesses, and there might be two versions, one you sew on and one that you glue on. (The glue may be needed to be activated by using an iron!)). If you attach it to the fabric around the stomach, it will remain smooth (especially if you iron the material you are wanting people to see before you attach it). Of course, you can just use a ruffled material, which may appear more casual and actually give you a more 3D effect. I wish you luck, health, success, and happiness in your experiments! May you love how you look regardless of what you wear (and if you wear anything!)!
i love learning about historical fashion because it really reframes how today padding or padded shapewear are seen as "cheating" in a way. when really there’s nothing wrong with it, why beat ourselves up about not having the "right" body when clothes have always had the capacity and role of creating that for us!
Also, like you mentioned in a previous video, the hair style and the hats also helped with the illusion. Big curly hairstyles as opposed to flat hair helped draw more attention and volume to the shoulder area.
Love it! 80s big hair accomplished this so well. I don’t want to go back, but they were glory days!
Can't believe Bernadette turned into the Baba Yaga at the end there!
Wonderful video! And still incredible that we keep getting tricked by all this, well, trickery! However I had never realised that the reason many actresses complain about corsets being part of their outfits might be (not only that they're not used to wearing one) that the way they're making them wear one is not suited for their usually pretty slim figure, and the film industry insists on tightening the laces instead of using other methods. Very good point! 🤔
Same here. Very good point! I can actually picture it perfectly now because I'm only now in my mid-thirties becoming a bit squishable in the middle and I'm still not very much so up and down the ribcage and hips; I have a rectangular bony torso and bony hips, with boobs attached. Which actually happens to work marvellously for Regency (since my boobs _are_ squishable and can easily be pushed up). But if anyone tried to turn my torso into more of an inverted triangle to fit the Victorian hourglass idea only through lacing, it would definitely result in disappointment and pain.
You’d think the people hired to create costumes for these “Hollywood” films would actually do some research before they start designing! The tight-lacing scenes are endlessly frustrating to watch, knowing that the stays and corsets that would have been used for the different time-periods would have had completely different purposes and silhouettes. They were made to be comfortable and supportive for the wearer as well as to support the dress and help create a silhouette. Thank you for this breakdown, Bernadette!
One frustrating thing about movie costuming is that the costumes are there to support the script and the director’s vision, not be accurate. So a costumer might very well know that tight lacing wasn’t done that way, but there’s no way the script is getting rewritten based on that.
@SB yuuuup. So many film costumers have commented on this. They may want padding, but the director wants oppression. (Whether because of *asthetic* or fetish or because they want the corset to become a visual shorthand for the oppression of the character, accuracy to the wind.)
@@Noracharlesssthe "corset scene" in pirates of the caribbean drives me crazy because the costumers didn't make a corset, they made stays, so you know they did their research, but the plot needed to happen and having Elizabeth faint from tightlacing the best they could come up with i guess
@@rowan_like_the_tree The fact that they decided to have her faint from the corset, and not from shock, or even fake fainting from shock to avoid the conversation, both of which were acceptable things to do.... Ugh.
@@bridgetthewench they could have even had her faint from the heat.
Bernadette’s gotta be one of my favorite internet historical fashion professors
Hi best friend, I love how sensitive you were about body types and body image. This is strangely comforting... I grew up with the skinny cult in full swing and it's done a number on me and my peers for sure. I still want an hourglass figure, maybe I'll start padding rather than trying to stay away from delicious treats!
I'm one of those people that uses corsets like pet thunder jackets. I deal with anxiety to the point that I feared that I would be late to my own wedding solely on the fact of being anxious about it all and my body sending me to the bathroom. My dress had a corset built in (a part of why I picked it) and I got one of my bridesmaids to tighten it down to where I wanted it to be. No anxiety that whole day! I was still late for the wedding but that was just because they forgot what room I was waiting in for it all to start... One day I want to get a better corset, but for now I have one that I got for renaissance fair-going and I'll wear that for days I have high anxiety and it works. Makes me feel like I'm always being secured down, I guess. But like you say, I only ever tighten it down to where it's comfortable to me, not to the point that the strings break- like what happened in my high school english teacher's class when she was showing off how to tighten a corset...
You and Temple Grandin!
I thought I was the only one! Some days I'll wear shapewear underneath a normal outfit because the pressure is calming
Honestly when you had finished layering up and just had the white shirt and black skirt, they proportions while small still look natural. But the second you grabbed the red sash and laid it flat, your waist looked even smaller! The illusion is real!
IKR!! 😱 I always looked at pics of Edwardian ladies wearing those sashes & wondered how on earth they could bend or eat in them? Had no idea the corset underneath would prevent them from compressing the actual body! 😮 It's incredible how much clothing proportions can trick the eye without making any change at all to the body underneath. Think that knowledge is something most of us plebs have lost in this age of cheap generic clothes & minimal layering...? (People who can afford to have custom tailored clothing still use it, but don't generally announce the fact!)
You should look into Margaret Fountaine,who was an Edwardian cyclist,naturalist,explorer,collector of broken male hearts/conquests. The distances she cycled in full Edwardian clothing is something else!
You can see in her photos she was quite athletic. It was all in the hair apparently...the broken hearts.
My favourite quote is her finding herself tired despite 8(or is it 10) large beers.
The survivorship bias aspect makes sense -- some of the idealized proportions/measurements you were talking about are simply how I was shaped in my late teens with no reduction or augmentation. I was able to wear some gorgeous dresses from the 50s that had clearly been made for someone exactly like me, then only worn a few times.
I was reading fanfictions for this game set in 1868. The writers and the people who made the game (released in 2015) were perpetuating the whole: "I can't breathe/move in this infernal dress! I can't wait to tear it off!" So I commented to the writers: "Please stop stereotyping dresses and corsets. They were made to be quite comfortable and you could easily move in them." They haven't said anything back. But I'm hopeful that they'll see it and change their minds.
It would probably help if you linked videos like this one and professional articles on the subject. It's hard to fix writing with just "don't do this," because you don't know what to replace that information with
@@necrodeus6811 I don't know if links work on wattpad.
@@PersephoneDaSilva Still, you could let them know that there's a RUclips video by Bernadette Banner called "How the Victorians Faked Tiny Waists (without fainting!)" and recommend they look it up and give it a watch to get a broader range of ideas on women's fashion in the period their game is set ;)
@@EmonEconomist I feel like an idiot. 😅
@@PersephoneDaSilva Not at all! Hope it helps :)
As an older woman with an increasingly "apple" shaped torso, I've not been happy with many of the fashion choices that claim to disguise my less than "ideal" shape. But after watching this video I think I will play more with the hip/bust illusions when I make my clothes. I adore fuller, longer skirts - they are not recommended for my body type as they draw too much attention to the wide waist. By adding some of these techniques, I feel I can re-introduce skirts into my wardrobe, and feel that I've done my figure justice. I think some of these concepts can be applied to more contemporary clothing, as well as period garments. Thank you, Bernadette
I visited a museum storage facility today and spent some time in the costume department. It was fantastic to see the garments up close and see the sheer amount of work in a pre-machine age
I myself am a long time viewer but have yet to comment, but I decided to discard my silence because I am so excited to see Bernadette back on the internet! You single-handedly revived my passion for sewing and dress history. I hope you are very well, and continue to flourish in all your endeavors! 🎉
I really am impressed with this video, especially the augmenting bit you demonstrated so beautifully!
I recently read Agatha Christie's biography in which she discussed how, having grown up during the late Victorian/Edwardian period, ALL the fashion, she wrote, was on having a large 'bosom', and she desperately wanted one just like her grandmother's! 😆 And then of course by the time Christie was full-grown and possessed a 'womanly' bosom, it was the 20s and fashions had changed to be slim and flat, much to her dismay. You can't win 😁 Waist size was not mentioned AT ALL.
So that made me wonder - how many of our ancestors were REALLY concerned about the waist effect, or was it the result of their concern about the big bust/hips effect. After all, these features are preeminent in motherhood, and in past society where the main fear was under-population rather than today's overpopulation, looking like a mother or a prospective mother was actually something to be proud of! How much did they REALLY care about small waists except for enhancing those more significant areas? After all, if a girl is so tiny she's unlikely to survive Victorian childbirth (like 'quite narrow' Melanie in Gone With the Wind), how many mothers are going to encourage their sons to marry a girl just to have her die in labour? And if a girl felt healthy enough and wanted kids enough to overcome the risks of her natural proportions, of course she's going to try to minimize the concern by augmenting them.
And then of course there's the issue of warmth. Without central heating, layers both on top and bottom were necessary to keep one warm, and making it fashionable made necessity more bearable I daresay. Clinching at the waist would have been the best place to ensure both clothes not falling off and preventing cold air flow between the leg and chest area.
I'll never understand how Regency fashion even got off the ground - as a UK resident I cannot see the practicality of those light flowy ancient-Rome (where it's warm) inspired garments in our climate - no wonder the Victorian fashions lasted so much longer! 😆
I watch your channel and your skill has far surpassed sewing, seamstress, tailor, and into the realm of ART. What a pleasure to watch you.
I have 2 close friends who transpired into artists also
Seamstress doesn’t nearly enough label their efforts!
I always love your corset debunking bits and vids! I think it also should be taken into account that alteration via pictures was even MORE rampant when the artist was able to do so at the beginning because it was a painting or drawing. The subject could just tell the painter to nip in their waist, remove scarring, or change their nose shape from the beginning. Or the artist could simply draw the picture with those dimensions because they wanted to. A lot of the drawing that were used in fashion pates, magazines, or advertisements were purposefully drawn with an exaggerated silhouette that wasn't supposed to be realistic.
Love these deep dives into that "how" behind the looks! The proportion and silhouette really does a lot of work to trick the eye, doesn't it?
I think another method of determining how to give yourself the illusion of a smaller waist is to figure out what clothes actually flatter you. For instance, I figured out that clothes that are slightly oversized and flowing flatter me more than entirely fitting or extremely oversized clothes, so I prefer the wide sash method to seemingly reduce the size of my waist. (A wide belt does good for me as well) Or if you look better in more tailored looks, padding in the hips and bust might be a better option for you, etc.
You would probably look very good in Edwardian fashion (Gibson girl style) or 1920's drop waist loose dresses (historical not movie style) :)
I wish this was something that was easier to figure out!! 😅 Actually once went to the lengths of photographing myself in underwear & digitally drawing on all sorts of various clothing shapes (paper doll style) in order to try & figure out what the heck would work best with existing proportions. Kind of got it sorted - problem is, chronic illness then changed my body shape & so now I have to work it out all over again..! 🙈
Seriously though, it feels like this is something most people either have to figure out by extensive trial & error, or never DO figure out and so are always unhappy with how they look...? I think it's a major factor in the resurgence of interest in historical fashions - people who can't find anything flattering in modern styles suddenly discover the proportions of another age really work for them! Hope that diversity continues to be encouraged for people of all shapes and genders...
@@anna_in_aotearoa3166 I Kibbe-tested myself to get an answer what a heck is wrong with my body... It's only system that was actually size inclusive (which is wow given it came from 1980's) and gives you type that stays even if your size don't. I was Gamine when I was wearing M's and I'm Gamine wearing XL. It has it's flaws, mainly being stuck in 80's mindset and explanations, but it's possible to find revamped versions that works more for today's world. At least it gave me rough outline to work with. Which in my case means: I look good in 1960's and 1920's, 1910' are good too but if I try to fake hourglass shape by any means I'd just look riddiculous :)
I have a bit of a pudgy stomach, and I've found that flowy dresses with sashes that tie at the natural waist give me an illusion of more dramatic proportions than I actually have. This only works because my pudge is directly front and center, though- my silhouette is rather hourglass-shaped as it is (though I suppose that does raise the question of what counts as an hourglass shape! My chest might be too small to count) and I just need to have some way to disguise the front bulge so as to allow my shape to shine through. (For context, I'm 81/74.5/84)
Now that’s educational, eloquent and fun! Well, it’s Bernadette, isn’t it?! I also always thought, why would women want to constantly harm and torture themselves, they apparently loved the fashion, so there must be something wrong with our perception!
Thanks Bernadette for this beautiful video, probably one of her best ones (which isn’t quite as easy to achieve)😊
I liked your visual comparison of corset/ no corset. Personally the visual impression of with corset to me looked better, and I wonder if modern elastic and moulded foam underwear would achieve the same look.😢
Another point about the illusion of the victorian corset is that it changes the shape of the waist from oval to circular so it looks smaller from the front but wider from the side.
Also, seeing extant garments in museums etc. And thinking they were all so tiny can be really relative to the viewer, we tend to think of ourselves as 'normal' size. Some extants I see I think, I wish I could try that on, it looks like it would fit me, or if its something smaller that it might fit my sisters. It would be so strange for me to look at a larger item (ie. Queen Victoria's clothing from later years) and think that all people were that size or to go into a plus size clothing shop and decide that all people today are larger. Of course there are differences between average sizes in the past compared to now but not to such an extreme extent
You've done videos before on corsets, comfort and illusion but this one really helped me to understand my frustrations with a corset. I'm 4'11", short waisted, muscular, and with a pretty much "sturdy" straight up and down figure rather than hourglass. I've made several corsets and can never get more than an inch and half reduction which made me think the probably was fitting and construction. Thanks so much for clearly detailing what is going on!
Yep! What you need is padding to create the silhouette!
I love corsets because they take the pressure of a waistband off of my organs. I’m very healthy, and whilst I cannot ever comfortably tight lace people just naturally assume I do. Those who don’t wear a corset just will not understand how it is so much more comfortable with than it is without.
I think it's more comfortable for done people than others, depending on your preferences. I like the "firm squeeze" feeling of a corset, but others don't. I'm in your same boat by the way, fairly skinny and I get at most an inch or two of reduction from my corsets. I think the reshaping (circle vs oval) and smoothing effect is what gives the impression of a teeny waist.
I had to stop wearing fake jeans because of the waistband (even if the the right size or very loose, and even with stretchy fabric!). I feel really bad about myself because jogging bottoms are the only comfortable clothing. (I love how skirts look, but feel so uncomfortable in them unless wearing trousers underneath!). I've been too unwell to 'dress up' for a long time, and now I feel so bad about how I look that I'm in severe denial about my clothes. It has gotten so bad that I don't have any mirrors in the house (other than tiny face ones for dealing with my eyebrows!). I could use some advice to take the first step. It's been so bad that I've been pushed to face the need to buy new clothes because (whilst not a complete hole!) I can see what my bathroom looks like, and even what colour everything is THROUGH the material of the jogging bottoms! (Tops are in a similar state, but I wear a higher neckline one underneath, so less concern!).
@@phoenixmoon5580 one of the problems with modern clothing is its immodesty. When I dressed in modern dresses and skirts I felt very uncomfortable about my body. Might I recommend looking at thrift stores for loose cut skirts and dresses that cover up nicely? I found that by hiding away what made me uncomfortable from the eyes of the world, I then judged myself less harshly.
@@christinareynolds8179 I prefer shopping in second hand shops, especially charity shop. However, I just don't like the feeling of where my legs rub together, so I need to wear trousers under skirts if I wear them at all. (Too much laundry to do that too often!). However, I would like to find an ACTUAL comfortable bra for my size! However, bras seem to be designed to be uncomfortable and make bigger, or uncomfortable and squish. So I guess I'm between a rock and a hard place for modern bras!
Also corsets were to keep good posture not to make your waist smaller. Tight liners were kind of like corsets but they were for making your waist smaller. Some people would get corsets that were too small bc they were cheaper and would do the trick.
Once again, Bernadette being an absolute fashion boss.
fun fact, the dress you showed when talking about waist measurements being bigger than ppl assume is my exact unreduced waist measurement, was very fun to hear lol. I'm in that portion of bigger people who's waist looks tiny by virtue of the rest of me being big (hips are a full 11 inches wider than my waist lol) so victorian fashion has always appealed to me a lot since it's like if I was a fashion style
Your jacket is amazing. I love everything about it. The silhouette is stunning. The pronouncedly peaked lapels are rather bold, but they somehow just fit so well into the whole. The fabric is very beautiful. The sleeves are simply set perfectly. I could go on, but I'm aware nobody wants me to, so I'm gonna stop right here. Anyways, it's glorious.
Like the new look and new voice
The day I learned that padding would be added to the shoulders or bust of shirts was the day I figured out it's not about making the body itself look a certain way but the clothing.
This was fascinating! And actually, the old Victorian trick of augmentation is something I use personally, and I teach my styling clients. The gist: cinch your waist and wear a voluminous top and bottom - it gives the illusion of an hourglass figure.
Also, gotta say, I adored the Nord VPN ad. Creative and hilarious. Glad you managed to get out of the pot!
I can take 4" off my waist with a corset, but I'm fluffy. A nicely fit corset should feel like a gentle hug. Where I feel it is in my back as the corset prevents slouching. Very fun and informative video.
I’ve become addicted to this channel. That scene in Titanic was Rose crying about her impossible situation of being forced to marry Cal for his money. Not the rightness of the corset.
*tightness. Excuse my incompetent phone
I feel like modern day people are just so distracted by the corset in that scene that they think it is the focus (and therefore what Rose is crying about). It was just part of her life as a high-class woman in 1912, and the woman dressing Rose definitely knew how to do it correctly.
Yes, her mom was helping her get dressed while talking about the situation. She didn't want to marry him and was very upset about it.
@@jessk187 absolutely. I have a bachelor’s degree in history and did my thesis on the female narrative from 1909-1945 (social history ). I came across a phrase “the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there” I forget who said it but it’s a great quote.
The tightness of the corset is unfortunately being used as a metaphor for the constrictions that Rose was facing. The mother lacing Rose's corset even tighter further drives the point home.
While I wholeheartedly support your endeavours and am eternally grateful for all the hard work you put into knowledgeably empirically debunking all these contemporary myths about historical bodies and fashion, I have to admit the entirety of this video was ever so slightly overshadowed by the glory of the laundry pot outtake. Glad you're supping the sweet air of freedom! (And seriously, thank you for this video.)
My co-worker once worked in Texas and went to a historical building/museum down there and was shown a dress with what to her seemed and impossibly small waist and was told that women back then would have a rib removed to make this possible. She has had this opinion ever since. Now having no background in history I love videos like this, helps to dispell many of those myths of the impossible waist. I mean, no one wanted surgery back then even when necessary, as you're more likely to die than not, so removing a rib for fashion just doesn't make any sense.
Plus, even if it was true (I doubt it is. I bet we could trace it back to some 1920's hysteria comment.) It was probably ONE INSANE lady who was of very high class. Not so different from... say Kim Kardashian risking her life to get a big butt. That's one person, and almost every woman, and some men wore corsets.
The idea that Victorians, before wide and safe use of anesthetic or antibiotics, would opt for massive surgery is crazy! The mortality rate of such a procedure, if a doctor would even try it, would be astronomical. Even in the modern day there are *maybe* a handful of people that have had this done.
Apparently this rumour first started when an actress publicized she had it done as a way to get media coverage around the turn of the century. Very unlikely that it was true.
@@CorwinFound Yeah, that seems rather deadly. And painful. The only thing I've heard about is 1950s and 1960s actresses having their back molars pulled in order to keep a slimmer face for longer and be marketable longer. As opposed to "oh, you're over 25, no more roles for you".
House museum docents range from great to clueless depending on budget, training or lack thereof.
Medically impossible
That was the best sponsor bit ever.
Also thank you for doing the with and without corset and attachments. It really shows the difference. Much appreciated
I think another thing really important to mention is people were wearing said corsets for much of their lives making their body’s more “squishy” and accepting of the pressure on the obliques making waist reduction much easier and more comfortable.
Modern corsets especially in Hollywood and in cinema aren’t necessarily made to measure as they would’ve been and there’s no seasoning or training done for the body or the corset making it stiff and uncomfortable or even painful to often very thin, lean actresses when they are tightlacing for their roles
This is fantastic! And great timing too; I was literally talking to a friend of mine about this yesterday! She was drawing my DnD character and I was talking about differences in various construction methods (lots of panels/seams/yardage vs less, fitted vs cinched with a wait loop, different silhouettes, etc), during which I sent her a couple of your videos (Game of Thrones, etc) - but then mere hours after that conversation you post this video! I do really like that you made the video which took all the advice you have from your other videos and put them - and more - in this single video! Thank you, Bernadette :)
I don't know if Bernadette will see this but:
A suggestion for types of videos regular viewers might like --> museum visits, etc! Since London has so much history and not everyone can go there, seeing some nifty museum visits or historical things would be really cool!
I love learning things about Victorian/Edwardian fashion from Bernadette. I also love the shenanigans she goes through for her sponsorship portion. OMG the pot.
So basically you're saying everything I do with my modern shapewear and my wide belts is exactly what Victorian women did. Cuz that's literally what I do. The full body shapewear is loose up top, and tighter around the waist. I generally wear a shaped skirts, or skirts that conform pretty closely to my silhouette. Thinking about getting some under things to go in between my skin and my shapewear to keep it from leaving marks on my skin and keep me from having to wash it all the time. Thank you for this breakdown.❤