Historical Recreation

This was an historically accurate recreation of typical clothing understructure for an upper class woman.  The underwear consisted of a corset, drawers and bustle cage.  The first stage of this project was to research paintings and fashion plates from 1875 to use as visual references.  Using this information as a base I scaled up patterns for the bustle cage and drawers, and drew up an original pattern based on my selected visual references to create the corset.  These pieces were constructed using original methods with machine sewing for the seams and hand sewing for the hems and finishing detail.  The corset has spiral steel boning for shape and structure, and flat steel boning for strength either side of the lacing eyelets and is finished with a curved steel busk fastening to the front.  The lace trim used on both the drawers and corset were as close as I could find to the original reference.  A striking combination of costume pieces that would add beautiful shape to an 1875 period gown.