Dear Sir,
Perhaps my experience will interest some of your readers.
My mother always had the tiniest of waists, and about the first thing I remember is admiring her figure and thinking that one day I’d try and have one like it.
I first wore corsets when I was eleven, but wasn’t allowed to start training my figure till I was thirteen. I can remember now my excitement at having my first pair of long, narrow corsets on my thirteenth birthday, and the thrill of being laced into them for my birthday party.
From then on I wore corsets night and day for nearly ten years. The actual figure training went on till I was sixteen. All this time my corsets were gradually stiffened and made smaller. My night corsets as this period were very long. They started high up on my bust and finished below the hips, and were so heavily and rigidly boned that I couldn’t bend at all, the waist measurement being 14in. My day corsets were, of course, shorter, to enable me to walk about and sit down. Their waist was 16 in.
As my training had been done gradually, I never had to be stretched and never had to use an overhead bar for lacing, and I never suffered in any way; in fact, I rather liked being tightly laced.
For very special occasions I used to reduce myself still further, and had two special pairs of corsets for this purpose, the night pair having a waist of 12in. I used to start wearing them about three weeks before the “occasion,” gradually pulling them in tighter and tighter night by night. With these I did have to use an overhead bar. For the last two days and nights I kept them on laced right up to their twelve inches.
Of course, with these long, narrow night corsets on, I couldn’t move about much or eat much. Then on “the day” I put on my special dance corsets, which had a 13in. waist, thus letting myself out one inch. In these corsets I could just sit down, but when I went out I was very pleased with myself
Of course, I always wore very tight, high heeled shoes, but I never had heels of more than 3¾in.
My evening gloves were arm length, also fitting extremely tightly. In fact, these used to make take me hours to get on, and I couldn’t move my fingers or arms much; but they never had a crease in them anywhere.
Yours truly,
“OLD FASHIONED.”