Book Review: "The Corset, A Cultural History" by Valerie Steele

Today's book review is on Valerie Steele's "The Corset: A Cultural History." When I studied abroad my Junior year of college I attended the London College of Fashion (LCF) for a semester. How they operate their study abroad semesters is that you take 3 required classes and then you get x amount of hours to choose other classes. For my three classes I elected to take Shoe Design, Millinery, and Corsetry. A big part of my corsetry class was keeping a sketch book / research book. Well, if there's one thing I love it's research. My corsetry book was full of notes and images (See image below)! My sketching isn't the best but man oh man can I research. I loved LCF's library, Purdue had basically no fashion books available and LCF was filled with any topic you could want to look into. I spent a lot of my free time in the library reading books, collecting images, typing notes, and making wish lists of books I would want to purchase for my own home library. I am immensely grateful for my time spent at LCF and for everything I was able to learn. 

One of the books I discovered was Valerie Steele's corset book. As quoted in the description for the book, "Valerie Steele, one of the world’s most respected fashion historians, explores the cultural history of the corset, demolishing myths about this notorious garment and revealing new information and perspectives on its changing significance over the centuries" (Amazon). What I enjoy about the book is not only the breakdown of the history and how the chapters are divided, but also the perfect mixture of different types of images. There are cartoons, paintings, advertisements, images of real corsets and garments, renderings, photographs from runway shows, and more. 

A lot of books will dedicate themselves to one specific topic on the subject, but Steele's book takes you through the history of the corset and how it's used in modern times as well. The breakdown of chapters is as follows: Steel and Whalebone: Fashioning the Aristocratic Body, Art and Nature: Corset Controversies of the 19th Century, Dressed to Kill: The Medical Consequences of Corsetry, Fashion and Fetishism: The Votaries of Tight-Lacing, The Satin Corset: An Erotic Iconography, and finally, The Hard Body: A Muscular Corset. So, as you can see there is quite a variety of focus on the topic. 

I learned a lot from this book and if you're interested in corsetry then I recommend checking your local library to see if they have a copy, or just ordering one for yourself because it is a lovely book to own. When I am doing research for a play and I know the time period would have corsetry as part of the wardrobe, I always include this book in my research pile to double check on my timeline and my general design ideas. If you do end up checking this book out, let me know how you liked it and if it was able to help you!