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Collections

Woman's Corset1750-1780

On view:
David Geffen Galleries, Transatlantic Exchange and Its Legacies
Museum display of 18th-century stays and hoop petticoat on a white mannequin; caramel boned bodice over a white chemise above a wide dome-shaped linen skirt structured with four horizontal hoops
Museum mannequin in three-quarter profile displaying 18th-century stays and hoop petticoat in ivory silk, with horizontal boning channels creating a domed silhouette; white powdered wig and lace-trimmed sleeves above.
Title
Woman's Corset
Place Made
England
Date Made
1750-1780
Medium
Linen twill and baleen
Dimensions
Center back length: 14 7/8 in. (37.7825 cm)
Credit Line
Purchased with funds provided by Suzanne A. Saperstein and Michael and Ellen Michelson, with additional funding from the Costume Council, the Edgerton Foundation, Gail and Gerald Oppenheimer, Maureen H. Shapiro, Grace Tsao, and Lenore and Richard Wayne
Accession Number
M.2007.211.353
Classification
Costumes
Collecting Area
Costume and Textiles
Curatorial Notes

Fashionable eighteenth-century corsets were shaped with a series of meticulously stitched, extremely narrow channels inserted with strips of baleen or whalebone (the hardened hairlike fibers lining the roof of a baleen whale’s mouth). Tightly laced at the back and stiffened in the front with a busk—a strip of bone, metal, or wood—these undergarments defined a woman’s posture and general comportment in accordance with cultural ideals of the female body. Girls started wearing lightly boned corsets at a young age, and these foundation garments became increasingly restrictive as one matured.

Nicole LaBouff

2024

Selected Bibliography
  • Takeda, Sharon Sadako and Kaye Durland Spilker. Fashioning Fashion: Deux Siècles de Mode Européenne, 1700-1915. Paris: Arts Décoratifs; Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: Delmonico Books-Prestel, 2013.
  • Takeda, Sharon Sadako and Kaye Durland Spilker. Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: Delmonico Books/Prestel, 2010.
  • Takeda, Sharon Sadako and Kaye Durland Spilker. Fashioning Fashion: Europäische Moden, 1700-1915. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: Prestel, 2012.
  • Örmen, Catherine. L'Art de la Mode. Paris: Citadelles & Mazenod, 2015.