Thank you for reminding me of the Dutch paints, I had forgotten about them. :) Though I am bias I do not think that my post was flaming. Your statement is not the first time I have heard about comparison of weight from the Renaissance to modern. I may have assumed that you had read the article that someone told me about a few months back. I may not be a big wompin' momma but I come in a close second, so it isn't a weight issue, it's an information issue, with me. I don't think that it matters of the size of the woman but I think you are correct about poor fit, and poor information. My friend who is into fetish and historic costume corsetry once told me many of the women she encounters from RenFairs have ill-fitted corsets.(roughly 60% have the wrong century corset) She has had women come to her and ask how can she wear that corset because they wore a corset for a RenFaire and was so uncomfortable. After explaining proper fit, she would offer to either fit them with a store bought corset or make one. 99% of those who take up her offer are satisfied with the results. I hear many think that the bawdy look is the norm and rampantly crosses the classes. Many assume that the head costumer is well read in historic costuming (usually they are) there are also those that show up to the RenFaire who have copied a gown that they saw at the faire the previous year not knowing whether it is period or another person perpetuating another person's fantasy. And then there are the major pattern companies and their "Renaissance" patterns that don't help the matter. Now this is my opinion and doesn't mean that it is 100% fact. De
-----Original Message----- That was my post, and I didn't read an article to come to that conclusion. In fact, it wasn't a conclusion, really, just a "toss it out there" idea, based on my own personal experience and observation. I'm aware of the paintings in which fleshier women appear (some of the Dutch ones in that same time period show the same sort of voluptuousness, too), but when you look at the nudes, it always seems to come down to an exaggeration of the sitter's hips/thighs. It's also an obsession that didn't show up everywhere, even in Europe, and certainly didn't maintain its presence in later centuries. I don't seem to recall something similar showing up at all until the lateish 19th century. I'm really trying to avoid starting some sort of hot-and-bothered, flaming thread here. It's not my business to be berating modern people for weight issues, and I wouldn't, anyways, having suffered from society's reaction to my own shape most of my life. So no value judgements. I was just wondering if the reason some of us see so many badly fitting bodices on women now is a combination of many of the women simply being larger, combined with some amount of bad taste, and a fair quantity of misinformation. I've done a lot of historical costuming over the last 2 decades (much of it for myself), and I know how many fittings of patterns and whatnot I've had to do to get the right look with my modern body. --Sue, in grey pre-dawn Montana, where it looks like our unseasonably warm weather has gone away again, alas! _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
