made this corset many years ago as 1) a back brace bc my spine was high key dysfunctional 2) a wearable mockup for the flocked black denim corset i was planning. i dont have either corset anymore and i dont believe i have any pictures of the black one (shame it had a beautiful peacock brocade lining). both were designed to be flat chested corsets in whats normally called the overbust style. though here there is no bust to be gone over

this denim one is made to close at 24" --corsets, especially steel corsets like this, are usually designed to be worn with a gap at the back but for back support i wanted the steel right up against my spine--and is laced in the back with paracord*. at the time i made it, i could zip it closed in front without loosening the back at all. this corset wasn't designed to constrict or really even to shape at all, just to prop up my bones. i wore it every day for a couple years and it was the most comfortable thing i owned at the time

the main pictures here (the in focus ones) were taken more recently, just before i gave it away. obviously it no longer closes (this is a success story) but it still fits well. i could have tried closing it but my ribs dont appreciate constriction so i just documented it as is. i have included 2 old and blurry pictures at the end for an idea of how it fit at the time it was made. i still miss those purple jeans

*paracord is a not a great lacing material but i wasnt adjusting this guy ever. i did pull the core out at least which made it both flatter and more maneuverable. it has a lot of tooth (friction) so it doesnt slide well but it does work as a cheap lacing material if you dont mind haulin on it

I think we can all agree that this is dumb, right? Though the title is highly misleading and the quote marks around "ban" do a lot of work here. These companies just no longer requires actresses to wear structural garments. Still a dumb and bad solution to the problem of badly made costumes.

Couple of my issues with the article:

The purpose of the corset or any other similar structural garment wasn't to reduce waist, but to provide support and shape the silhouette. In the article someone from Netflix commented that they shouldn't promote that women should make their waists smaller, apparently it's "bad optics". And from Neflix the main series where corsets are no longer required is Bridgerton, because one of the main actors had bad time with her stays. But if you take just one quick look at the Regency silhouette you will see the waist is far from reduced. Literally there is no waist. Completely covered. They have been doing something terribly wrong if they have made Regency stays that pinch down the waist. Some actors also seem to think the waist is supposed to be reduced all the time. I remember that one actor in HBO's The Gilded Age complained about the corset, but then in the same breath admitted that she had asked the costumers to make it purposefully a little too small so she could be tight-laced all the time (a practice some fashionable rich Victorian women did for high society events, and definitely not all the time). But beyond the inaccuracies in the article, there is an issue here. Structural garments supported the bust yes, but also in many periods they supported the weight of the dress. In 17th and 18th centuries and Victorian Era the skirts of rich women especially had a lot of heavy fabric which would be hard to deal with and move around with, if all the weight is only on the waist. But with a structural garment it distributes the weight to the whole torso, especially on the hips.

A structural garment needs to be fitted well and worn with with a shift underneath. It absolutely can be uncomfortable, create bruising and restrict breathing, if it's not well fitted. If you have ever used too small jeans that contain no spandex at all, you know how nasty the effects can be on the skin. Especially TV sets often have very little time for creating costumes and they might have just one fitting or at tops two or in worst case scenario none at all, which very easily leads to ill fitting costumes. That is a huge issue with structural garments. I've been making transitional short stays for myself and I have never made a garment like that so I'm still struggling fit it well (it's unfinished), and I can say it's not comfortable when it doesn't fit well. I haven't watched Bridgerton but I have seen couple of screencaps of different scenes with characters wearing stays and no shift to be seen anywhere. I really do hope they actually are wearing shifts when they have the full outfits on and just didn't wear them in these scenes for aesthetics or something. Because, yes, that will absolutely give you bruising, if you wear any type of fitted and structured garment against your skin without any fabric between it and the skin, against which the structural garment can slide against. It would be irresponsible to put your actors in such garments without shifts. I don't blame the actors for complaining about the "corsets", since I can believe they are uncomfortable if they are not well fitted or god forbid if they aren't wearing shifts.

I don't know how many times this needs to be said: corsets are not torture devices. While I don't blame the actors for complaining, reading comments like this kills one brain cell every time: "Women existed in that for such a long time, which does give you a lot of sympathy for that time period and what they were going through. For the first month, I couldn’t breathe." I'm sorry, but women literally did physical labour in corsets. They climbed mountains in corsets. (I have a whole post related to this.) Do these people really think so little of women in the past that, if corsets really were torture devices, they would have just endured them quietly for centuries? Of course the most fashionable clothing in a lot of the periods were uncomfortable and hard to move in, even restrictive, but those were the court gowns and ball gowns the young fashionable elite wore for the special evening occasions to show off to the high society. But does that really differ from today? If you look at the MET galas and stuff, do these actors really claim the outfits are comfortable? The everyday clothing and the clothing of the working class was fairly comfortable, and yes, they all wore corsets.

Yes, you can make properly fitted, comfortable supportive garments for costumes in any production. The proof is in opera. Opera singers wear corsets in a lot of productions. I have read many accounts by opera singers who talk about how their corsets are well fitted and actually makes singing easier, because you can "lean" on the corset (I don't know anything about singing, but that's what I have seen them say). Also they tend to wear those large and heavy period dresses and as alluded earlier moving on them on stage without corset would be very hard. Singing also would be harder as the singers could easily become breathless from moving the heavy dress without using the muscles on the whole body. Operas have much smaller budget than these big tv and movie productions, so there's really zero excuses for making badly fitting corsets.

So yes, it's dumb, it's inaccurate and kinda infuriating. But it's also actually pretty sinister. The issue isn't actors wearing corsets for many hours, that's what people have done for ages and still do in re-enactments, opera etc. The issue is that there's too little time for fitting and sewing the corsets in modern tv and movie production. And this is part of a much broader issue. Costume designers and makes are unionized in Hollywood and for a while now Hollywood studios have tried to cut the amount of unionized behind the scenes labour they employ.

Making profit from a movie or a tv show is not good enough anymore. Now productions that don't "perform as expected" are seen as flops. The production companies make predictions of profit and green light projects they have calculated to make most profit, and if they don't make that high profit, it's a flop and it won't get the planned sequel or the next season. To achieve those high profits they also do everything they can to lower the production costs, and one way is by employing as little unionized labour, to whom you have to pay fair wages, as possible. So costume departments are then very often understaffed and they have way too little time to produce the costumes in proper quality. This can be seen very blatantly in the clear drop in quality of movie costuming during the past couple of decades. So the reducing of structural garments in costumes seems like yet another attempt to reduce unionized labour disguised as feminism.

Obviously the good and smart solution to the problem of uncomfortable structural garments is to hire enough costumers for long enough time so they can have multiple fittings and make them better.

consider madara attempting (very badly) to make leo a scarf and its barely hanging in there (15 bazillion dropped stitches and horrible inconsistent tension)

Things that are alchemy and I will not be convinced otherwise:

The act of translation

Individual voices combining to create a harmony

The act of conjuring three dimensions within a single plane (drafting and rendering and grading)

The transformation of fiber to cloth to functional garment

Disparate ingredients combining to satiate hunger (big soup mood)

So much of the human experience is pushed forward by the transformation of one thing into another. Our lives are fueled by alchemy and are so much more strange and beautiful than we allow for in our narrowed perception. I propose we collectively engage in Alchemical Realism Summer. Thank you for your time

when i see thin and/or untrained tightlacers im like 😖😖😖😖😖😖 bro a corset is 1. not susposed to hurt and if it does it doesnt fit size wise or shape wise and 2. YOU SHOULD NOT BE TIGHTLACING FOR AN 8HR FAIRE!

not everyone needs to have a crazy reduction esp if your body isnt able or used to it.

I think my 2023 resolution needs to be to finish a draft of Circus Luna. It doesn’t have to be good. It just has to tell the bones of an actual story (as opposed to being full of sound and fury, signifying nothing), and be finished. 

i think i'm warming to the 1890s just a tiny bit.. usually that's my hard stop for enjoying seeing and making antique garments because it is SO intensely grandmacore. but every once in a while i do see a pigeonbreast s-curve look that does it for me

I want to dress up as the swan from the movie The Other Sister or as one of the birds from Henny Penny episode from Golden Girls. The problem is, I have no idea how to even start making either. How were they able to get the shape for the body and be able to get in and out of it?

(Full disclosure, I haven't actually seen either of these, so I'm basing my recommendations on what screenshots I could pull up with an image search on airport wi-fi.)

There are actually a lot of options for creating a shaped body structure, depending on your budget and skill level. The lowest-budget option would be a shapeable wire mesh like hardware cloth, sculptural armature mesh, or even chicken wire (you'll want to wear heavy-duty leather work gloves to work with any of these; cut wire edges are sharp!). Use heavy gauge wire or another rigid material to create a structural frame (around the edge, and to support the weight of the body), then cover that with the more flexible mesh so you can shape the "skin" however you want. You can then cover the mesh with fabric, fusible felt, or thin EVA foam and attach the surface treatment (feathers, etc.) to that layer.

Going back about 15 years 😅 this is how I made my Archangel Michael wings, shown below as a WIP. The wire mesh pockets fit over the articulated PVC frame, with heavier (~10 ga.) wire ribs supporting the bell shape. These wings were much simpler and didn't require compound curves like the swan body would, but the principle is the same.

If your budget is a bit higher, you could also consider materials such as Worbla's Kobracast Art, FossShape, or Celastic, which can be heat-formed and fused to fabric to create a seamless structure that needs no covering. These materials are a bit more sophisticated and look more professional, but they can be quite expensive over large areas, so they are more commonly used for costumes that need to be able to travel and remain durable (e.g. for theatre or a cosplay competition) rather than a one-off costume (e.g. for a Halloween party). You know best what your budget and costume purpose are, so choose whichever material best suits your needs and skills!

As for getting into/out of it... The Other Sister is actually a pretty simple design, as far as that goes. It's a one-piece step-in costume -- the actor's legs go through a hole in the bottom, and then it's pulled up around her hips as a single unit. It's supported by suspenders that (probably) attach to structural crossbars inside the frame, maybe with an additional stay somewhere to keep it from rotating around the actor's body. The Golden Girls one is more complicated, as it was made long enough ago that it would have used more traditional methods and materials. It's likely built with a combination of boning, buckram, steel wire, and padded fabric rolls attached to a boned corset/bustier for support (similar to the support structures for things like Vegas showgirl backpieces). There's probably a base garment that the various parts of the outer costume attach to. That's not to say you couldn't simplify it in your version, though! Lots of new materials have been invented in the past 40 years, so we have more versatile (and lighter weight) options now.

If you want to go really hog wild with this concept, you might also want to look up some tutorials for Gwendolyn from Odin Sphere. I've seen some phenomenal swan-body shapes come out of that cosplay community! And for additional structural support recommendations and patterning guidance, the fursuit/mascot building communities also have a lot of great resources and tutorials.

Good luck! :)

youd think reviewbrah would make enough Youtube Money to get his suits properly tailored

Hey there, thank you so much for the binder tutorial! I have a pull-over binder but sometimes my shoulders just Will Not do it and sometimes its just a nightmarish sensory experience.

I do have a question, is the horsehair absolutely vital? I’d like to know if I can substitute anything, since I dont currently have any.

hi! you can absolutely substitute something. fusible interfacing could work (i'd do a few layers if it's some of the thinner stuff, but it comes in all kinds of weights)

there's also coutil and buckram, which you could sew in as stiffeners (if they come in a fusible option i havent heard of it), or you could put in channels and use boning to give it some shape. even a stiff heavy canvas could work

i chose the horsehair specifically because it's very smoothing with a minimum of layers (this particular binder was made to keep me as not-sweaty as possible in hot muggy summers) but any stiffening material would work.

i got a new knee brace today. only for my left since insurance is Being Weird and would only approve 1 brace at a time. and I'm still adjusting but already my entire leg feels better. My eds was making the joint move side to side to an extreme degree and the shin bones/thigh bone rotate separately from each other in away that was Not Ideal for walking. and that was tugging at the ligaments in the entire rest of the leg, so the knee being stable should like, help hopefully.

i know it’s been said a thousand times but i’m real tired of fast fashion clothes made out of tissue paper

I headcannon that the Nightwings and Icewings used to share a lot of core culture, however just slightly altered to fit with their landscapes and myths.

(Pre-darkstalker time⬇️)

Both tribes have (or in the case of the nightwings, had) opulent fashion, opera, theater, dance, sporting events and incredible focus on their studies. Being studious and talented on multiple levels was seen as impressive and deserving of a higher status. The icewings tended to veer more towards military/fighting prestige, however, and the nightwings more so their studies of math, science, astronomy, poetry and philosophy, etc.

Opera or theatrical dance, for both tribes, was a very supported art form, but icewings tended to be stricter with their sonnets and more classical with their dances while the nightwings had many hippy, modern students changing the popular genre every couple of years or so. Grand masters of chess and other mental games from both tribes would compete against each other often. They had much respect for one another, but also saw each other as a threat in the global market, as they both sold finer/crafted capital (furniture, paintings, text books, etc), as opposed to other tribes which harvested raw resources (rainwings, seawings, skywings).

Icewings often saw nightwings as annoyingly modern, trying-too-hard-to-be-different geeks while nightwings viewed icewings as stuck up, boring, traditional dragons with no sense of evolved creativity. Neither of these stereotypes were exactly accurate. There were many young icewings trying to revolutionize their favorite art forms or sports, and many old nightwings holding on to the stricter ways of the past.

The two tribes went through periods of amicable alliance and hostility. It mostly depended on who was queen at the time, as she would sometimes seek good relations with the other tribe, or not. Whatever the case, the nightwings and icewings were more respectful of each other compared to other tribes. This only changed when Prince Arctic and Foeslayer met that fated day….

speaking my truth. i do not like Chanel and I never have, their designs bore me

Honestly? Realistically, what is going to happen with costume dramas and corsets is that actors who know their shit will get their own corsets custom-made and wear those on set since actors are supposedly going to be allowed to “wear their own underwear,” or the costumers are going to start building the structure into the outer garments. Because costumers are not idiots and the ones who care about a) getting it right, and b) the comfort of the actors are going to make it happen, so help them god.

i think it’s silly how a lot of people are obsessed with aesthetics or whatever. i will dress in approximately seven different styles or “aesthetics” every week… have fun!!! dress as if you’re edwardian one day and then dress like it’s the 90s the next… do what you want!