Date: c. 1920s
Origin: France
Fabric: Cotton bobbinet, machine lace, silk ribbon
Brand: Custom made
A girdle in cotton bobbinet tulle, with a black chantilly lace overlay and a woven cotton lining at the centre front panel. It fastens with a row of buttons at the left side of the body. It’s a relatively unstructured style, and would have offered gentle smoothing to the body rather than dramatic reshaping. It has 4 suspender straps, encased in black silk satin ribbons. Small silk satin rosettes embellish the waistline, hem and suspender points of the garment. A delicate scalloped edge lace trim finishes the hem.
Shorter girdle styles like these were a dramatic departure from the extra long corsets that dominated the the early 1910s. These shorter corsets offered the wearers a much greater flexibility in movement, in line with the shifting womenswear fashions and move to shorter hemlines and less restrictive cuts.
From the collection of Karolina Laskowska
