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Retro styling – you ought to have seen that term before! It is applied to everything from costume to home furnishings. Retro comes from the Latin meaning ‘backwards’. Here we are talking about retro shapewear. Although most of the remarks that follow describe the sleek chic girdles from the fifties and sixties, they may evenly apply to today’s girdles that are based on the firstborn designs. The war years were years of austerity and women on both sides of the channel dressed for comfort, to support the war effort. At the end of the war women wanted to attract their men and fashions reflected this desire. This culminated in Christian Dior fashion, which required a sleek, chic silhouette that only a corselet, corset or girdle could provide. Suddenly all women wore girdles, and not just women either – all the shapewear makers purposed not just women but teens as well. All kinds of ‘girdles for young teens’ were marketed. Probably the teen girdle that gained the greatest or most complete or best possible coverage, in more than one sense, was the panty girdle – a tight-fitting cross amid a girdle that kept the tummy in and one that protected the wearer from advances, whether unwelcome of otherwise! The girdle had various functions – to give that sleek chic silhouette to the wearer and to hold up the nylon stockings. Girdles in general had a minimum of two pairs of garter clips. There are two at the front and two garter clips, commonly more or less offset from the rear. The garters are offset so that when the girdle wearer sits down they do not have to sit directly on the clips! The open bottom girdles normally have the garter clips on elastic straps, which is utile in keeping the nylon stockings taught as the wearer moves about, sitting and standing. The nylon stockings from the fifties did not have spandex or lycra and were non-stretch; without the elastic of the garter strap the stocking would ‘bag’ as the wearer stood up. The panty girdle, and exceptionally the long-leg panty girdle often has the garter tab attached directly to the girdle itself. The leg share of the long-leg panty girdle normally altogether covers the welt of the stocking, losing the gap of bare thigh above the stocking top. Men normally find the flash of bare thigh and garter strap exciting; however, a long leg panty girdle, even though practical, hides all this and has consequently been described (along with pantyhose) as a “passion killer”. Girdle materials Modern and retro girdles normally feature spandex or Lycra for elasticity, but the basi girdles dating from around the 1930s ordinarily applied rubber to give stretch. The introduction of rubber was a major step in corsetry – the ultra-rigid corset had abruptly become more flexible. In parallel with it is introduction the terms affiliated with such items of costume also metamorphosed: from the introductory corset, the term roll-on came into vogue, in particular in the USA, then came the step-in and the corselette, many times known as the ‘all in one’. Indeed for a while Playtex marketed a girdle molded from pure latex – these have become rather the collectors item these days, partly because of rarity value. Pure latex deteriorates over time and the garment then perishes, so few stay in good condition. It is interesting to recognise whether the mutual latex allergy affected wearers, but whatsoever the reason, these girdles are no longer fabricated by Playtex. Retro shapewear part the same goal to be attained as vintage shapewear did, namely to sculpt the shape of the body. Elasticity may aid to hold and control figures but for more rigid control a potpourri of ‘bones’ have been employed over the years. The primary whalebone corset did genuinely use whale baleen – which are the cartilage-like “teeth” which whales use to filter plankton. Each baleen is enormous, around ten inches wide and ten to twelve feet long. It proved an idealisti material for corset makers because it consisted of parallel fibres that could be comparatively effortlessly split into thin strips; these strips could be shaped by heating them over steam and when they cooled they held their shape. As whales decreased supply became critical. Fortunately other number of things from which only one can be chosen proved suitable – manmade plastics like celluloid, and even flattened steel springs! Historic background to the corset The forerunner of the girdle was the corset, and that had it is roots further back still in ladies stays. Indeed there is archaelogical proof going back to 3000BC showing women with waists cinched in tightly by a garment that appears ribbed. It was around the fourteenth century that women started wearing a stiffened linen undergarment garment, laced in at the front or back, and by the fifteenth century these ‘stays’ were comparatively common; the probable derivation of the English corset from bodice (‘bodies’) to the French translation of this ‘corps’ which transmuted back to corset. The basi corsets were made by stitching together two layers of linen with a paste in the middle of the ‘sandwich’ to provide stiffening. By the 16th century corset manufacturers had turned to using whalebone (actually more in the right way called baleen) to offer the stiffening. This provided more rigidity than the earlier paste corsets. The corset gave way to the girdle by 1940, on both sides of the Atlantic, teamed with a bra. After the fifties came the swinging sixties, when women were exhorted to burn their bras and stop wearing such restrictive underwear. But as with all fashion, girdle wearing has now gone full circle. Burlesque artists have made the ‘art of tease’ in which girdles, basques and corsets are on show, into ordinary entertainment. Wonderbra have enticed the burlesque star Dita von Teese to design, model and market a range of retro girdles and bras based on fifties designs. The burlesque art form is now burgeoning and the honored Royal Festival Hall kept the worlds biggest burlesque lesson in January 2009, evidencing how mainstream this art has become. Original fifties girdles, corsets and basques are found in specialist online lingerie boutiques or vintage stores, but to satisfy the demand all sorts of outlets have now sprung up to satisfy the demands of burlesque. These shops and online stores without variation turn to the forties and fifties for styling inspiration for their retro shapewear – and the greatest item that seems to be in demand is the corset. Fashion genuinely has returned to it is roots. |
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