#costube nonsense
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Oh my god im going to fight these fucking youtube channels that are like “oh i recreated this [really expensive indie brand dress] for only [absurdly low amount of] dollars!!!”
It’s one thing to be like, “oh I wanted this dress but they don’t have it in exactly the material i want or in a price i can afford, so I’m going to try and make it myself!” It’s another entirely to act like you can remake it for $6 or $5. In fact it’s absurd to act like you can remake it for $50, often.
You have sewing machines. You have sergers. And even if you don’t have a serger you have fancy modern sewing machines that do more than one type of stitch. You are filming this in a designated sewing room full of expensive equipment that the average person does not have and/or know how to use.
But fine, lets talk about the way these brands are priced for moment. Almost all clothing with few exceptions (mostly knit things like socks) remains made by hand. A human being has to run every piece of stitched clothing you own through a sewing machine. This is backbreaking labor. If you’ve never done it, you have no idea how exhausting it is. A home-sewer making individual pieces for personal use has no idea how exhausting it is. My mother and her sisters did piecework for years in their youth. My mother worked in sweatshops when she first came to the US. She made something like $2-3/hr. In other countries that’s more like $2-3/day.
These slow-fashion, sustainable indie clothing brands that pay their workers fair wages for their labor are not overpricing their garments. You are paying for not just the superior quality but also the ethical treatment of garment-industry workers.
And it is completely fine if you see the price tag and know that you cannot afford that dress or shirt or whatever it may be. You cannot make that same dress for $6. You simply cannot. Federal minimum wage in the US is $7.25. Can you make that dress in under an hour? And I’m not talking about just the stitching. Can you pattern, trace, cut, pin, sew, and finish that dress in less than an hour? You might be able to manage that for a t-shirt. Can you do it for a dress with darts, multiple skirt panels, neckline and hem facings, topstitching, and pockets? Can you do it even half as neatly in that one hour?
I do not pretend the things I make are affordable. I do not pretend, even when I am able to thrift my fabric, that this is somehow cheaper than just buying something someone else already made. I find it deeply disingenuous to act like the cost of labor and equipment simply don’t exist.
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have you seen that annoying try guys video about corsets. why’re they tightlacing like it’s average wear?
Yeah, and it's just a lot of nonsense. Like all of those videos.
Why do they tightlace? Because that's what people want to see. Not everyone; a lot of people are genuinely interested in learning. But unfortunately, a loud minority wants to believe the easiest, least complicated, most sensational version of the past. And that loud minority votes with engagement. You CAN get clicks for saying the corsets were basically the bras of their day, and women's relationship with them was similarly complicated and individual, but they were not unilateral torture devices- look at the success of costube in recent years -but that takes effort. Why bother, when you can just play to the lowest denominator of historical clothing knowledge?
(On some level, I do understand where the impulse comes from- the eras where pairs of bodies/stays/corsets were commonplace were also times of intense systemic misogyny, so "women were forced into torturous undergarments" seems par for the course. And the pressure on women to look and dress a certain way is obviously wrapped up in misogyny, then and now, even though women were not suffocating themselves into 15" waists like pop history insists. It's a myth that makes sense given its context; that's how it's survived.)
(That and the fact that the women who wrote the most about corsets were the ones who hated them. Likely a minority compared to the vast numbers of women then alive in corset-intensive cultures, but their strong feelings compelled them to speak out in ways that the probable majority never did. Who sits down and writes "Dear diary, another uneventful day wearing an ultra-commonplace support garment that I'm fairly neutral about?")
(But if you absolutely loathe wearing something- due to sensory issues, perceived hassle of dressing, feeling like your needs aren't met or are impeded by the garment, etc. -and social pressure says You Must...yeah, you're going to have some Thoughts on that subject.)
#ask#anon#pop history#dress history#corsets#like I may think that a lot of modern clothing is unrepairable plastic garbage designed to give out in six months#created in cycles that move way too fast by people who think showing as much of your natural body as possible#is the acme of comfort and elegance and taste (but just for women)#and also that we should give the impression of being able to hike or do manual labor at all times regardless of what our#actual lives entail in a given situation#but not actually be able to do it (again especially for women)#BUT that should not be taken as an objective statement of What 2020s Clothing Is#because a lot of people disagree with me! and that's okay! humans have always been like that!
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Costube corsetry haul
I found two very cool videos this summer that I think push the envelope of what we "know" about corsets and corsetry:
Cat's Costumery shared part of her Master's dissertation on Dress and Textile History, about how corsets were mass-manufactured and worn by working-class women in the 19th century. This is really important to me, because mass-manufactured corsets are back in fashion now, and I'm sorry, but it is utter nonsense to tell a teenager not to buy a $20 corset off the rack, but to save up their money and negotiate with an adult for a bespoke $400 one. That's not the world we live in! We have to live with the corsets we can afford.
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2. Enchanted Rose costumes made a pair of 18th-century stays, and then actually wore them throughout her pregnancy, which is the kind of experimental archaeology you just cannot get except from intense dress history nerds. She says they worked really well and were really comfortable!
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While I'm here I'll shout out an older video that I've watched about a million times while I get my 16th century costume functional, because NOBODY TOLD ME that stuffing or padding your corset wasn't just to make your boobs look bigger! Display is secondary; the stuffing can just be a basic part of keeping your fucking tits from slipping down all the time. LIFE-CHANGING. My Tudor corset experience has been SO much better since I made myself permanent supportive padding.
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Research rabbit hole day one: Mostly YouTube
It’s actually day two because I started this nonsense yesterday, but hey.
Question the first: Did they, in fact, wear underwear? Weren’t they just ya know ... flapping around?
I knew the answer to this one, which is nah bro. The majority of humans are not rectangular. We have a variety of lumps in a variety of places. Also, tennis was big, and no one likes to run around a tennis court with no boob support. OW.
Question the second: Okay so what were they wearing?
This is where things got FUN.
I watch a lot of Costube (historical costuming YouTube) so that’s where I went first. Oddly, either the search algorithm sucks (possible) or there’s not a lot out there for the 20s! Lots of “History of the decade! They wore stuff!” but not a lot of “Here’s me making a thing they wore.”
I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s too simple to make good video? Lots of people making floofy Victorian petticoats, very few slapping a couple of squares together and calling it a day.
Anyway I did end up finding two that made the same pattern: Engineering Knits and Gwen’s Shenanigans. They both made a step-in chemise/teddy pattern that was free from Mrs. Depew Vintage at the time. It no longer exists, but it’s not exactly hard to reverse engineer from the videos. (Squares. It’s squares. Love the 20s already)
Question the third: WTF is a step-in teddy?
Examination suggests that it’s an undergarment that you “step into” through the side opening rather than pulling it over your head.
Question the fourth: So does that work as a binder?
No, but it looks heckin comfortable!
Question the fifth: Then what else do you wear it with?
No fucking clue, and apparently YouTube doesn’t know either, which means it’s time for
(echoey announcer voice)
Primary Sourcesssss
#screaming 20s#historical fashion#research ranting#no YOU started a side blog for an interest you'd had for less than 24 hours
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