From: owner-h-costume-digest (H-Costume Digest) To: h-costume-digest@lunch.engr.sgi.com Subject: H-Costume Digest V3 #175 Reply-To: h-costume Errors-To: owner-h-costume-digest@lunch.engr.sgi.com Precedence: bulk H-Costume Digest Wednesday, September 6 1995 Volume 3, Number 175 Important Addresses: Submissions to the list: h-costume@lunch.engr.sgi.com (or reply to this message). Adds/removes/archives: majordomo@lunch.engr.sgi.com Real, live person: h-costume-request@andrew.cmu.edu Topics: Re: Bouncing email ... getting off bounces. Re: corset talk clarification Re: Getting used to a corset Spanish Folk Costume Book footbinding vs. corsets Re: Feetbinding, sequins Re: footbinding vs. corsets The Corset Question Sequins Re: Getting used to a corset Re: What can a corset really do? Re: Feetbinding, sequins Re: footbinding, corsets and bias Re: corset talk clarification Re: corset talk clarification ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 21:42:38 -0700 (PDT) From: close (Diane Barlow Close) Subject: Re: Bouncing email ... getting off bounces. Dianne Karp wrote: > Help! I've tried twice to follow the directions and still cant get off > `bounces"! I am back on h-costume. Can you help? If anyone is experiencing problems with any of the lists on "lunch", you can write to any of: 1. Gretchen Miller via h-costume-request@andrew.cmu.edu 2. Gretchen Miller via approval-h-costume@lunch.engr.sgi.com 3. owner-h-costume@lunch.engr.sgi.com will reach a human being 4. Diane Close via close@lunch.engr.sgi.com 5. owner-majordomo@lunch.engr.sgi.com will reach a human being 6. Gretchen Miller at her personal address (only if desperate) grm+@andrew.cmu.edu That's six possible solutions without any need to write to the entire list with administrative problems! I hope everyone files this message away for future reference when/if they ever run into problems. Thanks! - -- Diane Close close@lunch.engr.sgi.com I'm at lunch all day. :-) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 08:19:56 -0500 (CDT) From: Teresa Shannon Subject: Re: corset talk clarification > From: Carol Kocian > Which brings up more questions: > Has anyone else noticed that the period of Chinese footbinding > roughly corresponds to corseting in the west? Both began I believe in > the 14th C (Gothic Medieval) and ended in the early 20th C. I am not sure what you mean by corset, but in 14th century England to the best knowledge of many costume historians with the researches, mistranslations and theories nicely summed up in an aricle in Costume: The Journal of the Costume Society (England) by Kay Staniland Vol. 3, 1969, a quite nicely researched job, a corset consisted of an often intricately decorated rich outer cloak women wore over all their dresses, many beautiful examples are described in Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince, and even one in Chaucer. There has never been found evidence that what you identify as a corset was used in 14th century Europe. 11th and 12th century noblewomen may have worn a corselet oftentimes, a tightly laced sleeved outer (only sometimes stiffened with reeds) "jacket" but the purpose was never a small waist, because portraits, sculpture and manuscripts never show small waisted women--"waists" not being a distinguishable desireable characteristics in an age when child-bearing was important. Other than that you have to wait until the 16th century for certainly a similarly defined "corset" to the ones referenced below. Do you mean something else? Yours in the relentless pursuit of knowledge, Teresa > How were sloping shoulders caused by the corset? 18th C stays > (3rd quarter) had shoulder straps that pulled the shoulders back, but > did not cause them to slope. I'm not as familiar with 1835 corsets. > Did they have straps as well to pull the shoulders down? I thought > they were strapless. If they were strapless, what made the shoulders > slope? > Jaelle, do you have a year for 8 Cousins? > > -Carol Kocian > ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 08:34:50 -0500 (CDT) From: Teresa Shannon Subject: Re: Getting used to a corset > Date: Mon, 4 Sep 1995 13:10:59 -0400 > From: BBrisbane@aol.com > > I think 'getting used to a corset' has both physical and psychological > comfort zones to contend with. Speaking from a 'medieval' perspective; > corsets do not so much compress the waist as compress the bust to produce a > Brenda Rich > > PS - Im told Im "frank" I apologize if my bluntness offends. > I assume you are dressing/talking about Tudor or Elizabethan or the Continental equivalents? Most enlightened people are so snobbish that they would NEVER call their superior age "medieval". The terms and concepts of Renaissance were oh so popular and the non-corseted, and backward medievals carry only the most superficial resemblence to the "new societies" and ways of life. I believe you madam are dressing as an enlightened renaissance person and are only being kind to the poor simple minded "medievals" who came before. Kind, but misleading to others.;-) In fun but also in all seriousness, Teresa ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 09:18:33 -0700 (PDT) From: Heather Rose Jones Subject: Spanish Folk Costume Book I picked up this book a the university's "taken out circulation sale" on the assumption that _somebody_ I knew would be interested in it. Anderson, Ruth Matilda. "Spanish Costume Extremadura." New York: Hispanic Society of America, 1951. 334pp It's a detailed study of Spanish folk costume in the early 20th century with LOTS of photos, both of individual garments and of people wearing them. I got it ridiculously cheap and will pass it on for cost (i.e., ridiculously cheap + shipping). Please contact me privately. Heather Rose Jones hrjones@uclink.berkeley.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 13:54:17 -500 From: "Carol Kocian" Subject: footbinding vs. corsets My original question: > Has anyone else noticed that the period of Chinese footbinding > roughly corresponds to corseting in the west? Both began I believe in > the 14th C (Gothic Medieval) and ended in the early 20th C. Dorothy Stein replied: > Footbinding did not end in the early 20th century, but was ended after > the Communist revolution (i.e., mid-20th century). It was part of > liberating women to be more productive. Such is the reluctance in the > West to give the Communists credit for anything, they are often criticized > for forcibly making women remove the bindings (which, to be fair, > after many years of wearing and deformation of the foot was as painful > as the original application had been). There are still women alive in > China whose feet were bound in childhood. I did remember reading somewhere that it ended in the early 20th C. Coincidentally, I saw a letter to the editor in Sunday's (9/3/95) Washington Post written by Judith Judson: "....The communists should not be given kudos for discontinuing the practice. It was going out of favor by the beginning of this century. A tiny amount of credit for this can go to the notorious Dowager Empress, who as a Manchu, disapproved of the custom, which was never practised by the Manchu dynasty. More credit goes to the humiliations endured by China at the hands of Westerners, which led to the first efforts at modernization...." Of course, this could be just the bias Dorothy mentioned. As for the beginning dates of corsetry, I remember reading about bodies made of two layers of fabric & stiffened with paste, worn in the gothic medieval era to keep a straight, smooth shape. Definitely not a waist-pincher! I made the connection between the eras of corsetry & footbinding many years ago, in a library far far away. It made sense that the "liberating" from corsets & footbinding occurred around the same time. I may be off on the beginning eras of both, due to a bad memory & possibly bad references at the time. -Carol Kocian ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Sep 95 09:53:36 BST From: Alan Braggins Subject: Re: Feetbinding, sequins > as the original application had been). There are still women alive in > China whose feet were bound in childhood. There was a television program here last weekend called "Half the Sky" about the changing role of women in China, which included a bit about a woman showing her feet to her niece - "Yes, there are five [toes], see, one is hidden under here. These bones are broken. Really the arch isn't high enough, this bone ought to be broken too." She didn't seem at all bitter about it, it was just what was normally done. "A girl with big feet wouldn't get a husband. People would look at a girl with small feet and say how beautiful she was. I said it too. " > GUESSING, but I bet the plastic sequin became popular with the rise of > synthetic fabrics. It must be easier to produce than the metal ones and you > can get many more effects (translucent or opalescent for example) And (really more relevent to the fantasy list) something I saw recently - "holographic" diffraction grating sequins (flashing rainbow colours a bit like light catching a CD). ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 16:48:08 -0500 (CDT) From: Teresa Shannon Subject: Re: footbinding vs. corsets On Tue, 5 Sep 1995, Carol Kocian wrote: > Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 13:54:17 -500 > From: Carol Kocian > To: h-costume@lunch.engr.sgi.com > Subject: footbinding vs. corsets > > As for the beginning dates of corsetry, I remember reading about > bodies made of two layers of fabric & stiffened with paste, worn in > the gothic medieval era to keep a straight, smooth shape. Definitely > not a waist-pincher! > > I made the connection between the eras of corsetry & footbinding > many years ago, in a library far far away. It made sense that the > "liberating" from corsets & footbinding occurred around the same > time. I may be off on the beginning eras of both, due to a bad memory > & possibly bad references at the time. > > -Carol Kocian > What a ridiculous Washington Post article, there is a reason poli sci courses won't allow U.S. newspapers to be used for research purposes (unless its for opinion polls)! This is not to blame you of course, in the several hundred years or hundred and fifty , I know it went on for a time, but cant remember if is was 300 years or 150 or somewher inbetween, of the Manchu Dynasty there was foot-binding aplenty, including the royal concubines, even if the direct family of the emperor didn't practice it. I saw this marvelous documetary in China (by Westerners) who asked many surviving foot-bound women, some that still had them bound, about binding the falling out of favor, and knowing how frequent and important Western contact and opinion was behing the closed doors [major sarcasm] of attitudes towards feminine beauty in China -just about zilch-it would be laughable to assume that. Not blaming you, you just read the article and didn't write it, the audacity sometimes. Anyway, about corsetry, I should be remiss if I did not ask for exact sources, knowing not only of many scurrilous ones, but interested in the actual facts, about the gothic plaster body cast you mention. Duly intrigued would be an understatement. Please go back and try and dig them up when you have the time, I understand if you are too busy, believe me! I am not convinced there is anything to the time correspondence, women have always since time immemorial in written history been sequestered confined, and shaped to man's desiring, I would say all of which are negative, and after awhile, women follow suit, it is a continuous story in most cultures and most times, foot-binding is a particularly horrible one, but so are clitorectomies and body piercing to deny pleasure. Perhaps there is more to your information that points to particulars that would strengthen a theory of connection. I would be interested in any particulars and gems you have of the 14th Europe, and in someways China, too. Your avid reader, Teresa ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 14:38:51 -500 From: "Carol Kocian" Subject: The Corset Question For all those interested in period views on tight lacing, there is a small book (8 1/2 x 12", but only 24 pages) called: The Corset Question, A selection of correspondence from THE ENGLISHWOMAN'S DOMESTIC MAGAZINE 1867 - 1872 on tight lacing, figure training and the wasp waist. There is no author, no publisher, no ISBN#, etc. I got my copy from Amazon Drygoods about 7 years ago. It appears that someone copied & pasted together the letters from the magazine without re- typing them. Another bibliography source is COSTUME, a general bibliography. This booklet is from the Victoria & Albert Museum in association with The Costume Society. It was compiled by Pegaret Anthony and Janet Arnold. My copy is dated 1977, so hopefully there's a better, more recent version out there. Another good book: The World of Roman Costume, edited by Judith Lynn Sebesta & Larissa Bonfante. ISBN 0-299-13850-X University of Wisconsin Press, 114 N. Murray Street, Madison, WI 53715. Copyright 1994. This is a very complete source. The contributors have also made the costumes. Their efforts are featured as well as photographs of artwork, etc. The price is about $50.00; I got my copy at Border's. For anyone in the Washington, DC area interested in looking at Roman reenactors, Legio XX (The Twentieth Legion) will present a display of Roman military & civilian life. This will be at Marietta Manor, 5626 Bell Station Road, Glenn Dale, Maryland. Sunday, September 24, from 10 am to 4 pm. Free admission. For directions, call Marietta Manor at (301) 464-5291. -Carol Kocian ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Sep 1995 12:56:06 +1000 From: ser@adminserver.canberra.edu.au (Sarah Randles) Subject: Sequins Just a couple of things to add to the sequins thread: I believe the Elizabethan term is spangles. They tend to be made from brass and are generally seen on the backgrounds of black work embroidery of the geometric fill stitch type. They are usually attached by one or more threads going through the central hole and over the top of the sequin into the ground. I have not seen them attached with a bead for this period. From memory Janet Arnold talks about them in Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd - I think they feature in one of the inventories, and they are also discussed in George Wingfield Digby's Elizabethan Embroidery. The source I have been using is the cheap and nasty elephant caps and purses which tend to abound at markets etc. They are actually burmese and made for the tourist market, so I don't have any qualms about cutting them up, and they have exactly the right kind of spangles. Sarah (who is really an embroiderer, pretending to be a costumer) **************************************************************************** ********************************************** Sarah Randles ser@adminserver.canberra.edu.au Research Office Phone: (06) 201 2955 University of Canberra Fax: (06) 201 5381/5999 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Sep 95 20:09:42 PST From: Kat@grendal.rain.com (June Russell) Subject: Re: Getting used to a corset Dee wrote: :What is "getting used to a corset " ? : :Is it PSYCHOLOGICAL - learning to move in a different way, learning to bend the :knees to pick something from the floor ? : :Or is it PHYSICAL change to the body - rearranging the internal organs, upper :lung breathing, changing the spine/shoulder disposition? : :Perhaps someone here could suggest a way of testing for the two alternatives ? I don"t know about testing, but a medical text I used to have from the early part of this century said that men and women breathe differently and that their internal organs (especially the spleen and liver) were shaped differently. The drawings and discussion accompanying clearly show damage from a tight corset. Also, isn't that one of the reasons why Dolly Pardon had problems. Kat Kateryne of Hindscroft ( June Russell ) pacifier.rain.com!grendal!kat kat@grendal.rain.com Heu! Tintinnuntius meus Sonat! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Sep 1995 13:41:29 +0100 (BST) From: Dorothy Stein Subject: Re: What can a corset really do? All the talk about corsets lately, and it seems to be a fascinating topic for a number of reasons, reminds me of what corsets did for me. They put me off any interest in clothes for many years. As soon as I reached adolescence, I could not enter a dress shop with my mother without her sidling up to the salelady and whispering stagely, 'Tell her [i.e., me] to wear a corset'. I soon refused to do any shopping with her, and all the while I was in college my mother bought all my clothes in my absence and sent them to me. It wasn't until long after I graduated and my husband and I rented a flat in Denmark that I reconnected with clothing. The flat had a broken treadle sewing machine, which for fun (and lack of any other affordable amusement) we took apart and reassembled. To our amazement, it worked, and I began to make clothes on it. I have never had anything but a treadle or hand-operated machine ever since. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Sep 1995 13:18:00 +0100 (BST) From: Dorothy Stein Subject: Re: Feetbinding, sequins On Tue, 5 Sep 1995, Alan Braggins wrote: > "A girl with big feet wouldn't get a husband. People would look at a girl > with small feet and say how beautiful she was. I said it too. " The belief that women with bound feet were more desirable as wives was not simply an esthetic judgment. In what must be one of the most widespread of all bizarre erotic beliefs and practices, even the puss soaked bindings were fetishized, as well as the misshapen and infected feet themselves. Perhaps the pallor and swooning 'vapours' of the tigh-laced western woman is somewhat analogous. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Sep 1995 11:50:19 +0100 (BST) From: Dorothy Stein Subject: Re: footbinding, corsets and bias Yes, it should be pointed out that the Manchus (who along with other 'national minorities' such as the Hakka) never did practice footbinding had been in power since the mid-seventeenth century, and had had quite a bit of influence over other matters of dress, yet in all that time their 'disapproval' had not stamped it out. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Sep 1995 13:28:42 +0100 (BST) From: Dorothy Stein Subject: Re: corset talk clarification On Tue, 5 Sep 1995, Teresa Shannon wrote: > .... the purpose was never a small waist, because portraits, > sculpture and manuscripts never show small waisted women--"waists" not > being a distinguishable desireable characteristics in an age when > child-bearing was important. I doubt if this counts as 'knowledge', but childbearing was important in all ages. Pregnant queen or princesses may have occasionally set a fashion for high-waisted or bulky clothing, but the very small waist was often in imitation of 'virgins' who were desirable prospective wives precisely because their small waists indicated they were NOT pregnant. Elizabeth I was very proud of her small waist and advertised her virginity. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Sep 1995 10:02:02 -0500 (CDT) From: Teresa Shannon Subject: Re: corset talk clarification On Wed, 6 Sep 1995, Dorothy Stein wrote: > On Tue, 5 Sep 1995, Teresa Shannon wrote: > > > .... the purpose was never a small waist, because portraits, > > sculpture and manuscripts never show small waisted women--"waists" not > > being a distinguishable desireable characteristics in an age when > > child-bearing was important. > > I doubt if this counts as 'knowledge', but childbearing was important in > all ages. Pregnant queen or princesses may have occasionally set a > fashion for high-waisted or bulky clothing, but the very small waist was > often in imitation of 'virgins' who were desirable prospective wives > precisely because their small waists indicated they were NOT pregnant. > Elizabeth I was very proud of her small waist and advertised her virginity. In the fourteenth and fifteenth century, flemish, english, french and italian paintings the virgin representations of female martyrs and saints, and especially the mother Mary, were not shown with small waists at all, the virgins looked pregnant. In fact, even the wild women looked pregnant, slightly. I don't know what to say about Elizabeth, I really don't know much about the renaissance period of England or anything later, after 1450 I'm fairly clueless, but justifiably so as the people of the renaissance, inevitably and loudly seperated themselves from their medieval ancestors. Many things happened, exploration, slavery, reformation, reassertion of a european "puritanism" so perhaps attitudes changed. Slender waists have always been a generally desireable characteristic of maidens in Europe, even in the fourteenth century, but I am not convinced and don't have enough knowledge that their concept of a slender waist was anything like our Victorian/Modern one. I think we may still be thinking very Victorian here. What looks pregnant to me from a manuscript illustration is occampanied by text praising a slender-waisted maiden. Granted, maybe the artist is full of it and probably didn't read the book, but I just appears to me that their slender-waisted is a modern, comfortable slimness and not a sculptured body. Earlier time periods may(probably) have also had different ideals (or different countries and areas), I don't know, but I resist the interpretation of small waist with slenderness and find that the moderate ideas that appear in my fourteenth century research seem fairly consistant. I am starting to think the renaissance really affected people minds in a deep way that corrupted many of the medieval ideas and eventually ended in the social, political travesties of 18th and 19th (and 20th century) colonialism, social-darwinism, slavery, racism (in its current form). Of course, the medieval were far from egalitarian and tolerant, I just wouldn't be surprised with stark differences of beauty between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Please continue the comments, sources and research I am fascinated by your observations and am continually learning. If you have paid special attention to this small-waisted category, would you please point me in the directions of your finds in reference to medieval and specifically fourteenth century? Thank you. Teresa ------------------------------ End of H-Costume Digest V3 #175 ******************************* A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, send the command lines: unsubscribe h-costume-digest subscribe h-costume end in the body of a message to majordomo@lunch.engr.sgi.com. Thanks and enjoy the list!