Avert your eyes gentlemen! This one’s not for you….
Hello ladies. I glean from a fashion magazine that corsets are on their way back, apparently prompted by the influence of costume drama on television. Despairing designers in an economic recession, are jumping on the wagon.
Ho hum, fashion is cyclical. What goes around, comes around. As a postwar baby-boomer I was reared in a society of well-armoured women, for many of whom corsets were an effective policy of containment and a signal remedy against the cold in their kidneys. They were not so much dressed as upholstered. Attempt to hug an elderly aunt and you ricocheted off her.
The rite of passage from childhood to budding adolescence, from socks to stockings, began with the wordlessly supportive presentation of a cotton bra and a suspender belt that cruelly delineated every undulation of puppy fat and the beginning of a life of bondage.
At 16 came the ‘SlimJim’ girdle, encasing waist to hip, made of strong elastomeric fibre ‘with fingertip panels for extra control’. Weighing only seven stone I could barely get one leg past the other in it. Modesty was all. Necklines below the collar bone were met with acerbic remarks like, “Nice girls don’t put all their goods in the shop window.” Mini-skirtmishes over decent hem length went on for years until the hippy-dippy, drapey-traily, patchouli-scented 70s and Women’s Lib, though, to the best of my knowledge, there were few bras burned in Norn Iron.
And so it continued, the arbitrary diktat of fashion decreeing the ever-changing silhouette of women and we, like sheep, wore it whether it suited us or not. The photographs live on to embarrass us. ‘Dynasty’ dominated the 80s with shoulder-pads like a rugby prop-forward, eccentric asymmetric hairstyles and ankle-breaking platform soles. I’ll not dwell upon the rigid zip-fronted undergarment bought to achieve Joan Collins-like contours, save to say I had to be cut out of it at three in the morning by the Loving Spouse, very gingerly, with a Stanley knife.
Today, morals are looser, clothes are tighter. Now it’s all sporty, second-skin stretchwear and big hoofy trainers, worn mostly by people sitting on sofas eating popcorn or chips and watching telly. There are many fewer formal occasions for making a sartorially elegant effort, but when they arise, induce a flurry of flabby panic.
Fear not. At the back of every sizeable dress shop is a lingerie department and at the back of that department is a discreet display of ‘flesh-toned’ undergarments – though I’ve never seen flesh that colour. It resembles a medieval gibbet of beige boneless corpses. Here is salvation for the ‘well covered’ who’ve tried and failed to slim into the special occasion outfit. Here comes a steady stream of quart-sized women, anxious to pour themselves into pint-sized garments bought more in hope than expectation and recognising with relief a last resort when they see one. Ah, bliss! Thy name is Lycra.
It’s generally agreed that clothes look better on slender people, but for the well-padded, these are a boon. Few of us are naturally of model proportions. Most have put on weight during this pandemic out of sheer boredom or comfort eating. Half an hour’s brisk walking per day is counter-productive if you come home to an Ulster fry.
Suffocating undies don’t exactly guarantee a fret-free outing, but it’s the price we pay for self-indulgence – and here, on the rails is salvation of a sort. The ‘all-in-one’ has much to recommend it – a svelte, seamless silhouette from shoulder to knee with not a corrugation in sight, but unsuitable for those fond of energetic dancing, (so perspiration-inducing,) or the weak-bladdered, (very iffy in a small toilet cubicle with a faulty lock.) Separates, while more comfortable, create a series of horizontal midriff folds of escaping blubber, reminiscent of the Michelin man. Better avoided.
Sadly, while weak-willed women secretly espouse such subterfuge, we cannot yet claim to be fully liberated. Still, it’s surely wiser to base life on a firm foundation.
