So you want to wear a girdle?

Then you may want to read this post. There is no doubt that a proper foundation do a lot for the way clothes hang and vintage clothes are made for women who wore that. If you look at these two pictures, it’s the same dress (albeit the second one has added sleeves) and the same me in a dress after a 1950’s pattern. In the first picture I wear modern shapewear, in the second a corset and a fuller petticoat, but the same bra and body weight. I think you will agree with me that the fit is a lot better in the second one.

Girdles and corsets and the right shape, oh my

Let’s stay in the same time frame as in the post about fashionable figures, the early 20th century to the 1950’s, but remove the clothes and see what was worn underneath. The origins of corsets or stays are very hazy, the first known examples dates to around 1600, but those are already fully developed garments, two layers of fabric stiffened with reeds or whalebone. A piece of clothing designed to change the female body so it conforms to the ideals of the time. And ideals change- just during the first decades of the 20th century it went from super curvy, to super straight.