Cathie Jung may have the official record, but here's the unofficial as far as I know: http://www.spook.dk/ (go to Past Corsets, then 14 Corset) Warnings: 1) not a family-friendly site, and 2) Just Plain Wrong. It looks like she's gone back up to 20, but it's Still Wrong.
Anyway, I haven't looked into the topic thoroughly, but I'm completely in the "Victorians messed it up yet again" camp. Apart from all the cultural reasons that make it extremely likely for it to be a Victorian myth, there are the iron corsets themselves. Even without knowing the measurements, compare them to Spook's photos--either the iron corsets are made for someone about 3 feet tall with a 13" waist, or they're made for average-sized adult with a reasonable waist measurement. Take a look at a few extant or at least attributed 16thC iron corsets: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Image:Ironcorset.png http://www.geocities.com/technically_naked/1550_Italian_Steel_corset_red.jpg http://www.staylace.com/unsortedjpgs/iron.jpg Compare these to what the Victorians allege (well, in this case, a 1919 repetition of what the Victorians allege) was worn in C de M's time: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13444/13444-h/images/ill102.png (and incidentally, skim through http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13444/13444-h/13444-h.htm if you feel that you really have too much hair, and would be best served by removing some of it by hand in clumps.) If I remember rightly, Valerie Steele's book has an image of a metal (steel?) corset that almost perfectly matches this sketch, except with a larger waist; she claims that it's a Victorian hoax, and I can certainly see why, as it bears little resemblance to the more verifiable examples, and much with Victorian metal-working techniques and tastes. -E House, pro-corset, but not fond of tightlacing. _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
