Contributors

Marianne Faulkner is highly regarded in the modern corset community as both a designer and corset educator. She is based in San Francisco.

Holding both a BFA and MFA in Fashion Design, Faulkner designs under her own innovative corset label ‘Pop Antique’. Her creations combine comfort, function, whimsy and sustainability. Pop Antique’s corsets are recognisable for their flexibility and lightness, as well as the signature ‘cupped rib’ silhouette. She is also the associate creative director at renowned corsetry house ‘Dark Garden’ and co-ordinates the couture department.

Alongside her design, Faulkner actively engages in corset education through her website ‘The Daily Waist’. Her archived column at The Lingerie Addict remains an invaluable resource. She was a founding fellow at the 2013 Oxford Conference of Corsetry, and returned in 2014 and 2017 to speak.

Sophie Grapentin is a history student with a soft spot for historic undergarments. Originally from Frankfurt, she is currently studying BA (Hons) History at the University of Oxford. Her interest areas include material culture, women’s history and the history of bodies. Alongside her degree, she is a staff writer for the student publication Cherwell and campaigns for a fairer, more sustainable fashion industry with Fashion Revolution. When she isn’t writing, you’ll find her wandering through the beautiful university parks trying to befriend the goldfish.

Caroline Elenowitz-Hess is a fashion historian based in New York City. Caroline is currently a PhD student at Bard Graduate Center, while also hosting webinars on fashion history with the New York Adventure Club. 

Caroline spent several years working as a fashion designer before pursuing her MA in Fashion Studies from Parsons. She previously received a BA in English Literature from Yale University and an AAS in Fashion Design from FIT. She has interned at both the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the Museum at FIT. Her writing has been published in Fashion Theory, Atlas Obscura, Jezebel, and the Bloomsbury Fashion Video Archive and she has been quoted in articles in Harper’s Bazaar, i-D, and W magazine. Her research is focused on definitions of femininity and modernism in the twentieth century in France and the United States. 

Summer Lee is a fashion historian and content creator based in Brooklyn, New York. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications and Media from the City University of New York and a Master’s Degree in Fashion and Textile Studies from the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT).

Since 2017, Summer has contributed to many digital and print publications about contemporary and historic fashion, including LUCY’S Magazine, The Vintage Woman Magazine, and Enchanted Living Magazine. She has held curatorial internships with the Historic House Trust of New York City and Girl Museum, and in 2021 co-curated the digital exhibition The Roaring Twenties and The Swinging Sixties with the Museum at FIT. She has also worked with the Costume Designers Guild, the Association of Dress Historians, and the Costume Society of America.

You can follow Summer on Instagram and TikTok.