With the Oxford Conference of Corsetry coming up this weekend, England is flooded with corset makers and enthusiasts. Today I spent the day in Sparklewren’s studio, aka Corset Paradise, with Jenni “Wren” Hampshire, Lucy of Lucy’s Corsetry, and Lowana of Vanyanís. InaGlo Photography was also present to shoot a few styles for Vanyanís, and Sparklewren’s Jenni Hampshire got behind the camera for several impromptu photoshoots with me as I tried on […]
In corsetry, custom, bespoke, and made-to-measure all mean essentially the same thing, just as ready-to-wear, off-the-rack, and made-to-order have similar or overlapping definitions, depending on the maker. Which means they should all follow a similar process, right? Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. All too often, I hear sad tales of made-to-measure corsets that don’t fit because an essential step was skipped. Here’s what you should expect when ordering a […]
I first became aware of hip fins on corsets via Sparklewren, though there are quite a few couture corsets (particularly corset bodies) that feature them. Though “hip fins” has become the commonly accepted name for them, I like to think of them as miniature panniers; they could also be considered a sort of floating gore or a stiffened semi-peplum. This detail generally parallels the iliac crest and emphasizes the dramatized […]
Flossing is one of my favorite corset embellishments. Though it’s nothing new, it has incredible potential for variation, as you’ll see from the following images. Flossing is, in short, a particular type of embroidery on corsets, generally used at the ends of bone channels. Flossing can be used as a selective accent, as I once did on a client corset, where the flossing placements traced the hourglass shape of the […]
