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Corsetry, Tight-Lacing and Waist-Training

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"To put on a corset properly is as much of an art as to make a corset properly." -- Anna Held

Corsetry, also called tight-lacing or waist-training, refers to the practice of wearing a boned garment that laces tightly around the body, thus reducing the waist measurement. Corseting can be done occasionally for fashion purposes or pursued full-time as a form of body art. On and off, some form of a tight and shaping undergarment formed the foundation for many modes of dress designed for women. In the modern era, women have found a lot more ways to be shapely and comfortable, but there are those of us who still find wearing a corset from time to time to be delightful.

This lens will teach you about corsets, shows how to lace a corset properly (including how to lace yourself!) and has great corsets for sale.

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All About Corsets & Corsetry

These links will quickly take you to the different modules on this page. Please leave me a message if you can't find the info you're looking for! (so I can add it to this lens)

Of Corsets and Tight-lacing
Books on the History of Corsets
Glossary of Terms
Waist-Cinchers
Links to Sites about Corsets
Serious Cinchers
Corset Photo Gallery
Leather Corsets
Famous Corset-Wearers
How A Corset Should Be Laced
Self-Lacing And Pulling Down By Yourself
Corsetiers
Corset and Corset-Lacing Videos
Corset Fancier Societies and Sites
The Corset Strings - Guestbook

Of Corsets and Tight-lacing

How I Came To Wear Corsets

My first encounters with corsets were as a costume major in college. I wasn't wearing them, I was cramming fellow students, acting majors, into them and lacing them down. We didn't do too many period dramas, but it happened from time to time. This was working as a dresser backstage. You crammed the actor into the corset the designer had selected for them and pulled it tight until they fit into their costume.

After graduate school, I got a job at a leather/fetish clothing and gear manufacturer, working first in the wholesale department, and then managing the web site and mail-order. One item this company made was corsets. I had to sell people corsets without ever seeing them, without them being able to try the garment on. I talked with our designer, I talked with workers who sewed the corsets, I talked with the sales associates who worked our retail store. Each provided a bit more info about how you fit a corset.

I'd been there about a year when I got my first corset. I got a few more over the years, including one made custom to my measurements. Wearing corsets taught me even more.

I sold corsets to goth girls, plus-size women, young ladies and soccer moms, and a bunch of very discreet crossdressers. When someone is willing to shell out a few hundred bucks for a corset, you really want to get the fit as right as you can on the first attempt.

I'm sorry for those actors that my corset expertise didn't come until much later. Sorry guys, here's where I give it all back.... :-)

Books on the History of Corsets

Historical and fashion references about corsets and corsetry

Glossary of Terms

These are some of the basic terms and phrases you will hear used when people talk about making or wearing corsets.

Busk - This is the term used to refer to the front fastening of a corset, most often a metal panel sewn into the garment that fastens with hook-and-eye type fastenings. The front bust can also be a very strong zipper. Corsets can be made without front busks, but getting in and out of them can be laborious.
Chemise - This used to mean a women's blouse, but in modern terms, it refers to a light slip worn under the corset to offer more comfort and protection for the skin, versus corseting right over the bare torso.
Corseting - The term given to the practice of wearing a corset. Also called tight-lacing or waist-training.
Garters - Some corsets come with permanent or detachable garters for holding up thigh-high stockings. This eliminates the need for a separate garment to perform that function. Found more often on period corsets from pre-20th century.
Lace Protector - A panel of boned material that is slipped down the back of a corset, in between the wearers back and the laces. This can cover gaps in corsets that don't lace all the way closed, and offers comfort by preventing the laces from digging into the wearer's back.
Laces - These are the fastenings that run up the back of a corset. Suddenly releasing a corset when the laces have not been untied has been known to snap corset bones, so you should always loosen laces generously before undoing the busk on the front of the corset to avoid damaging the garment when you take it off.
Over-bust - This term is used to describe corsets that come up over the breasts, providing coverage as well as support. Over-bust corsets are a complete upper body garment.
Puller loops - This is the name given to the part of the corset laces that are pulled to tighten down the garment.
Stays - This is the term given to the thin strips of material that makes a corset stiff. Originally, corset stays were made of whalebone, but now most modern corsets use steel stays. When they were whalebones, stays were sometimes just called "bones." A modern quality corset will have steel boning. Many items sold as corsets have plastic boning that bends and deforms over time so be sure to check.
Under-bust - This term is used to describe corsets that stop anywhere along the ribs, leaving the breasts exposed. These corsets can be undergarments, paired with a bra to make a top, or worn over other clothing as part of an outfit depending on their construction.
Waist-Cincher - This can be an unboned wide belt, or sometimes it is fully-boned as a corset. What makes waist-cinchers different is that they are primarily shorter in height on the torso than corsets, being only about 6-8 inches wide. Corsets tend to cover the torso from the chest or high ribs down to the hips.

Waist-Cinchers

the lighter-weight members of the corset family

A waist-cincher is most often styled like a corset but is shorter, covering the torso from the bottom of the ribs to the top of the hips. They can run from about 4" wide up to about 12". Sometimes they are boned with plastic boning and made with elasticated fabrics. These can provide waist reduction but they don't pull down as far or as firmly as steel-boned corsets made of heavier fabrics or leather. You will sometimes find short corsets also refered to as waist-cinchers so be sure to check materials and construction notes before you buy.

Links to Sites about Corsets

Here's more in-depth information and websites that delve into corsetry.

Fashion History of Undergarments, Paniers, Crinolines, Bustles, Corsets and Bras: Costume history of underwear from stays, paniers, corsets to crinolines, bustles, bras to girdles.
Mini History of the Corset: Corset History
In the 1830's, the corset was thought of as a medical necessity. It was believed that a woman was very fragile, and needed assistance from some form of stay to hold her up.
The Elizabethan Corset Page: History, patterns, resources and full instructions for an Elizabethan corset
BBC - h2g2 - Period Costumes - Corset History: h2g2 is the unconventional guide to life, the universe and everything, a guide that's written by visitors to the website, creating an organic and evolving encyclopedia of life
Training corset - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: A training corset is generally a corset used in body modification. A training corset may be used for orthopedic reasons (such as to correct a crooked spine) or for cosmetic reasons (to achieve a smaller waistline, commonly called tightlacing).
Style: Extreme Beauty, The Body Transformed exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Extreme Beauty, The Body Transformed
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
December 6, 2001 to March 3, 2002
MetroActive Arts | Corsets: Is wearing a corset an act of liberation?
"Of Corset Matters": A review of Valerie Steele's The Corset: A Cultural History By Christina Larson, from The Washington Monthly
Essay Depot - The Corset: All throughout history, a person's economical and social rank could be shown through what clothes they wore. In ancient Egypt, a person of upper class was permitted by law to wear sandals on the harsh, desert floor. Because of these laws, female-confining ideals arose. For example, the Greeks and Romans controlled the type, color, and number of undergarments worn by women and the kind of fabric décor used on them. The torso became the sculpting block of feminine beauty. This was the beginning of the corset, a restraining, essential item in the women's attire through the 19th century.
Early Corsets from Cretan to 17th Century - Fashion History: Early Corsetry Fashion History By Pauline Weston Thomas for Fashion-Era.com
Corsetry - Shaping the waist - Australian Museum's Body Art: The shaping of the waist, through belting, corseting, girdling or hiding its natural curve, has long held universal interest
Embrace The Corset: Corsets have been around for a very long time - centuries, in fact, or perhaps even longer. The very first indication of corset usage was discovered at a Neolithic archaeological site in England. The find was a picture of women wearing a corset type piece of clothing made from animal hides. So they've definitely been around for quite a while!
Tightlacing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Tightlacing (also called corset training and waist training) is the practice of wearing a tightly-laced corset to achieve extreme modifications to the figure and posture and experience the sensations of a very tight corset. Those who practice tightlacing are called tightlacers. Some tightlacers call the corsets they wear training corsets.

Serious Cinchers

Once you get into metal boning, you are talking about a more serious cincher. Plastic boning can bend over time, but spring steel is what replaced traditional whalebones due to its strength and flexibility.

Corset Photo Gallery

Tight-lacers and Waist-trainers can be part of many different fashion and costume looks.

Crumbling Throne by Outdated Productions

Blogger in a Corset, after Toulouse-Lautrec by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

[ B ] Carl Heinrich Bloch - Woman at her toilette (1882) by Cea.

"Tight Red Skirt" by Fetish Art Identification Search

[ C ] Pierre Carrier-Belleuse - Young woman adjusting her corset before mirror (1892) by Cea.

automatically generated by Flickr

Leather Corsets

heavy-duty construction and boning for the best reduction

When you are serious about tight-lacing, you often go down a few sizes, thus "under-growing" your corset, and frequently the garment is nowhere near wearing out. Often, they show little to no signs of wear until after a few years.

For a serious waist-trainer, the only way to stay in properly-sized corsets is to resell ones that are too big and buy used ones for your new ones until you get down to your target measurements.

Patent leather is stiffer than regular leather, so any corsets made primarily from this material will be tighter, with less stretch and "give" than a conventional leather corset. Sometimes with patent leather, you have to go up in size to get an appropriate fit.

Famous Corset-Wearers

Cathie Jung: Cathie Jung smallest waist on earth
Ethel Granger: Ethel Granger
A fat chance Kylie! | the Daily Mail: The master corsetier who created Kylie Minogue's startling new nipped-in costume revealed that her entourage had been fibbing outlandishly about the singer's eye-wateringly tiny waistline.
CSI "Way To Go": At the crime scene, Grissom joins Nick and Detective Curtis at the train tracks. The train engineer called in the 911. The victim is male, headless and wearing long john flannel pajamas and riding boots. There's not much blood near the severed neck, which is strange for a decapitation, yet grease trace around the neck supports the theory of a suicide on the tracks. A toupee is found nearby with some blood drops, so Nick slides down the embankment in search of a bald head. As David Phillips tries to take a liver temp he is struck by another anomaly: the male victim has a 19-inch waist. Even Sara feels fat.
Urban Legends Reference Pages: Horror (Getting Waisted): Did Cher have ribs removed to make her waist smaller? Did anybody?
Tiny Waist Page: Tiny Waist Page Dedicated To The Wasp Waist of Yesteryear - Here are a few celebrities with tiny waists. I have measurements on some and pictures on most.

How A Corset Should Be Laced

These are instructions for how to properly thread the laces in your corset

The biggest technical mistake people make with corsets is not threading the laces properly. The point at which all the excess lacing needs to be pulled is NOT the top or bottom, it's from the middle.

Overall the threading of corset laces is a lot like lacing a shoe. However, the regular lacing pattern does change in the middle, so that puller loops are formed.

Shown here is a waist-cincher of mine, showing the back lacing. I threaded a piece of pink silk cord in with the laces, following the lacing that starts from the right top of the back busk, so that you can better see how the lacing goes.

If your corsets comes to you unlaced, or if you take the laces out and then can't remember how they went, here's what to do:

- Find the midpoint of your corset (from top to bottom) and mentally note this.
- Thread the corset lacing into the top two holes and pull to even length so that equal amounts of lacing are on each side.
- Begin lacing in the usual criss-cross fashion moving down the busk.
- When you come to the midpoint, skip a set of eyelets and thread throught holes that are two down from where you are, leaving a set open.
- Leave a big loop of excess lacing and then go back through those empty holes from the outside of the corset (this should bring you back in line to start criss-crossing again)
- Continue back into the criss-cross pattern until you get to the bottom and then fasten the laces with a strong knot.

Please note: The mechanics come out so that by pulling the "top" cords of the puller loops upwards, you take slack out of the lower half of the corset and when you tug the "bottom" cords of the puller loops downward, you are tightening the upper half of the corset.

Congratulations, you've just threaded your own corsets laces!

Self-Lacing And Pulling Down By Yourself

A girl's guide to getting into her own corset

In the Vogue article reporting on the wedding of rocker Marilyn Manson and model Dita Von Teese, milliner Stephen Jones remarked that he'd never seen a girl lace herself into a corset, after he'd watched the bride-to-be do just that. Self-lacing is a skill that can be mastered with just a bit of practice and often saves on having to find someone to lace your corset up for you.

One of the ways to make it easier to lace yourself down is to use a bedpost or door knobs as an aid. I like the door knob version but don't require it anymore. After wrapping the corset around your torso and closing the front busk, pull some of the slack out of the back laces. Take the two puller loops and hook one each over the two knobs on either side of an open door. As you use your fingers to take out slack from the rest of the laces, if you walk forward, the puller loops will stay taut on the knobs and take up most of the excess. Neat trick, huh?

It's good to have a strong mental image of how the laces work (see the lacing module further up in this lens) so that you can tell what part of the laces you are tightening. I tend to wrap the long puller loops around to the front and hold them in my teeth while working out excess lacing from the back. I work from the top of the corset down to the middle, and then from the bottom edge back up to the middle. I find that wiggling the laces as you pull on them gets them tighter than just pulling alone. I periodically take up the slack into the puller loops and then work on the back laces again until I have the corset as tight as I desire.

When I tie off my corset, I make a large bow in back, leaving the tail ends just a tad longer than the bow loops. This is so that should I need to unlace myself quickly, I know exactly which ends of the bow to pull to free myself. Some corset-wearers carry a small knife or scissors in case of an emergency where they need to get out of their corset very quickly.

Corsetiers

A good corsetier is worth every penny

What you have here is a list of companies and individuals that make corsets. You will find dozens of websites that resell many of these styles and items, but I've tried to take you right to the corset source here.

The Ardent Collection-Corsets - Individual custom-made-corsets: Custom made corset-design according to individual ideas or historical corset-descriptions (Victorian Corset, S-Line-Corset, Rococo-corset) by individual measurements and body-proportions.
Axfords Corsets: Wide range of quality corsets, tight lacing and boned, for an hourglass waist. Personal service and expertise from leading UK corset maker Axfords.
C&S Constructions: Information page for purchasing fine custom-fitted English corsets directly through the Long Island Staylace Association
Dark Garden: Dark Garden, corset maker, fetish, bridal, fantasy and leather corsets
Lara Corsets & Gowns: Historically Accurate & Inspired Garments for Women
Nightshade Corsets: Authentic, hand-made corsets at a reasonable price. Steel boned, back lacing, made with silk, brocade, satin, velvet. Custom sizing available.
Shop securely online.
originals-by-kay.com: Remember the last time you purchased a bra? How many did you take into the fitting room? How many fitted? Well, this would explain why so many corsets bought "off the shelf", all one design, are so uncomfortable. This is why you will find many different styles of corsets in this catalogue and why each one is made to order - to fit exactly YOU.
Puimond - Progressive Corset Design: Puimond - Progressive Corset Design - Unique, high-quality, hand-made corsets for fashion, bondage, costumes, or training.
Rawhide Corsets: RAWHIDE CORSETS custom made to measure corsets and accessories, in the finest quality leathers silks and pvcs, based at The Custard Factory in Birmingham, West Midlands
Vollers - The Corset Company - UK and Europe - Fashion Corsets and Lingerie: Vollers Corsets - UK and Europe based designers of fashion corsets from traditional designs to racier PVC and satin varieties
Wasp Creations Custom Corsetry: Wasp Creations Studio creates the finest corsets for daily tightlacing, fetish and elegant occasions.
Wornert Couture: Wornert Couture designs and sews customs corsets from the specifications of individual body types.
Fashions of the Ages - Corset Measurement Form: Extraordinary Historical Attire Corset Measurement Form
Corset Connection Custom Corsetry: All corsets are sized by waist size, in 2" increments. Corsets should be ordered 2-6 inches below your natural waist measurement, depending on the desired effect. If you are tiny, then your waist will not compress as easily, nor as far, as a person who is larger.

Corset and Corset-Lacing Videos

Versatile Corsets: by versatilefashions | video info

97 ratings | 135,749 views

curated content from YouTube

Corset Fancier Societies and Sites

Corset Heaven. Corset Shopping for underbust and overbust corsets.: Corsets from Corset Heaven. Corset Shopping chat, pictures, Tightlacing and advice pages.
European Corset Society - International Portal: The European Corset Society is an international society of people with an interest in corsets.
LGM - Les Gracieuses Modernes: Les Gracieueses Modernes. A corset lovers society.
Long Island Staylace Association-Laced Corsetry & Stays Site: Site for corsetry enthusiasts.
The NYC Tea Society Corset Calendars : CafePress.com: The NYC Tea Society laces down for charity.
Tighten my corset: A corset blog
Wearing your Corset - tips and tricks: A correctly made corset will hold your back straight and your shoulders back, so you will have great posture and less stress on your lower back muscles. A lot of corset wearers also report that a corset gives them a certain confidence, so they feel better and more beautiful when wearing one.
The Grand Corset Ball: The Grand Corset Ball Our 2005 Ball was very well received by guests. Thanks to all our guests. We know you had a wonderful time. You told us! Click on the the Lady to see some pictures of the night.

The Corset Strings - Guestbook

comments, feedback, questions and recommendations

Please let me know what you though of this lens! And if you have a brief corset question, you can also ask it here.

Reply

nikyweber Jan 31, 2012 @ 9:52 am | delete

Amazing lens! Squidlikes!

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myamya Jan 31, 2012 @ 9:43 am | delete

Amazing post! thumbs up!

Reply

sheezie77 Jan 8, 2012 @ 4:56 pm | delete

Great info and very nice lens! Thumbs up!

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Ladymermaid Dec 16, 2011 @ 10:03 am | delete

Corsets really are very attractive body shapers. You have done a wonderful job of explaining how they work and the various types available to consumers. Great article. Wishing you and yours a wonderful and peace filled holiday season. The very best of seasonal blessings.

Reply

jimmyworldstar Dec 12, 2011 @ 9:11 am | delete

I didn't know people still wore corsets! I enjoyed learning about the terminology and different kinds. I'll have to convince my wife to try one on.
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