Pulling power

I HAVE a photo of my great-grandmother in all her strait-laced Edwardian splendour — good coat, flamboyant hat and an expression full of gravitas.

I often wondered why she looked so serious — having donned a corset, I now know the reason for her severe demeanour. A corset not only changes your dimensions and your deportment, the sense of constriction when wearing one is pronounced, even painful. My great-gran wasn’t just adopting a pose for the camera, her face probably reflected the discomfort she felt contained in her whalebone corset. Corsetry and 12 children is a difficult combination.

Most modern women have no experience of corsetry and no conception of the intense sense of physical restriction and compression a corset creates. My generation has grown up unperturbed by lacing, whalebone or steel bands — for them fashion has been about freedom, comfort and self-expression. Why then would they find themselves drawn towards the controversial cult of the corset and dreaming about hand-span waists? Is it because in the past 60 years, women’s waists have grown by six inches? Are we tired of lycra and dressed down informality?