Once I decided what I wanted to do, the next question was “what are the appropriate underpinnings for these silhouettes?” For fest garb, I always started with my corset and shift. But houppelandes predate corsets – did I still want to wear one?
Tabling that for a moment, did Shoryl want to wear one? While we tend to think of corsets exclusively as women’s clothing, corsets did have a brief period of being worn by at least some men, and for the same reason women did: to shape their figures to the fashionable image of the time.
Regardless of what it emphasizes or hides, a corset is for providing a smooth line under clothing. Shoryl could wear a binder and potentially a girdle. Or, they could wear a corset, which has the advantage of being a single garment, as well as being much more breathable than a garment made of thick stretch poly, like a binder. That decision made, let’s come back to me.
The biggest factor in my decision to not make myself a corset actually had nothing to do with historicity – as I keep reminding myself, this isn’t a historical costume, it’s a masked ball costume. While a corset would allow me to shape my figure how I wanted to, the biggest factor was…warmth.
I’d by this time decided that I was already going to be wearing an underdress with my houppelande. A corset would add not one but two layers: both the corset and the shift, because corsets aren’t worn against the skin. That means that my waist, for example, would be wrapped in a grand total of 8 layers of fabric: a shift; a corset, corset inner, and corset lining; an underdress and lining, and a houppelande and lining. Despite Midwinter Masque taking place in January, I could not see how I would not immediately expire from heat in the middle of a ballroom. So. No corset for me.
A Twist of Metaphor 