File:The well-dressed woman- a study in the practical application to dress of the laws of health, art, and morals (1893) (14582868208).jpg

Identifier: welldressedwom00ecob (find matches)
Title: The well-dressed woman: a study in the practical application to dress of the laws of health, art, and morals
Year: 1893 (1890s)
Authors: Ecob, Helen Gilbert
Subjects: Women's clothing Women
Publisher: New York, Fowler & Wells Co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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the ancient coquetry which resorted tobandaging. Martial satirized the fashion a.d. 43.A historian of the Emperor Antony mentions thathe wore corsets to suppress obesity. There are no evidences of waist coustricture dur-ing the early Middle Ages. About the eleventhcentury the power of fashion began to be felt, ex-travagant dress and tight bandaging increasing con-tinually. The corset of the twelfth century was atarget for caricature, a French artist representedthe devil in the dress and corset of a fashionablewoman. In the fourteenth century women painted,popped, and farded themselves, pulled the hair offthe f.n-ehead because high foreheads were thoughtbeautiful, and washed the hair in wine to changethe color. They also desired a slender and fair-shapen body. In the fifteenth century came thecorsets framed with steel and fortified with busks.AVe ought to find in that liberty of thought whichproduced in Germany a Reformation and in Italy aRenaissance a corresponding reaction in dress.
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A scarf worn loosely about, the shoulders and knotted A la Charlottetoday i- suited to slight figures. The Marie Antoinette fichu is h favorite ,itl, artists, (1 preservesth< tline of the figure and gives an appearance f oneness between the upper and lower parts of the body. THE PEDIGREE OE THE CORSET. 101 Mr. Heath says that, in the western countries ofEurope thoroughly leavened by these influences, thewaist had ample scope and dress was open to noobjection on the score of health or decency. The excessive lacing of the sixteenth century,practised in England, France, Austria, and Italy,which rendered the form completely insectile, isthe climax in the ignoble history of the corset. Itis peculiarly significant that Catherine de Mediciintroduced this form of lacing into France. Atthat time a thirteen-inch waist measurement wasthe standard required by fashion. Xo woman wasconsidered the proper figure whose waist could notbe spanned by the two hands. To produce thisresult a strong, rigi

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