Dear Sir,–In a recent number your correspondent, “Moderation,” offered to give advice on the subject of figure-training.
A friend of mine, living in France, has asked me for advice on this subject, but I have failed to get any information worth handing on, and so perhaps “Moderation” or some other experienced person would be so good as to tell me how one sets about tight-lacing.
This friend has three daughters, aged respectively 15, 12, and 10; and, foreseeing the return of fashion to wasp-waists, she wishes to accustom her daughters to tiny waists while they are young.
The eldest laves her tightly boned corsets tightly already, but my friend is afraid she may damage herself unless given proper corsets for this purpose.
Her waist is about 21 inches.
The middle-one is an unruly girl, and my friend hopes to quieten her down by lacing her into very long tight stays night and day, and making her wear a firm shoulder brace.
She tells me her mother was frequently punished, when she was a girl, by being laced very tightly indeed into her sleeping corsets, which were so tight and long, and so heavily boned, that she could only just walk in them, and could not sit down at all.
The youngest daughter has, unfortunately, a deformed leg, and has to wear long leg-irons; but as the disability is slight, and possibly temporary, my friend thinks she also should be tight-laced.
At present all three wear rubber reducing corsets night and day, though they are all slim, to reduce their waists and hips while the eldest wears a rubber belt under her day corsets. Is it possible to tight-lace over rubber belts, thereby combining the advantages of the corsets of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries?
I might mention that the eldest two wear boots with high-laced legs and 3in. heels, while the youngest can wear 2in. heeled boots with comfort, in spite of her deformity.
Now, perhaps, “Moderation” and some of your tight-laced correspondents will give me their views through your columns, if you will allow it, and earn the thanks of myself and my friend. At any rate, perhaps someone will give descriptions of their experiences in tight-lacing and the kind of stays they wore. The corset makers I have approached are not all helpful.
Apologizing for this lengthy letter,
Yours hopefully STAYLACE.
(It is extremely wicked and dangerous to imprison growing girls in corsets in order to gratify a taste for an absurd and unhealthy fashion. Figures should be trained by exercise, not corsets–Editor.)