Reflections

Two Nerdy History Girls found this surprisingly lovely red silk corset in New York City’s Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Described as “healthy” because it’s made using coraline, a plant-based material more flexible than whalebone or steel, it was created by "regularly educated physicians" at the Warner Brothers Company of Bridgeport, CT. Here’s their almost charming sales pitch:

"Coraline...is more pliable and yielding to the movements of the body. The object of stiffness in a corset is not to convert the form into a rigid statue, to paralyze the action of the heart and lungs, to destroy a woman's comfort and to ruin her health...All the benefit a corset can give is to afford just that degree of rigidity to the waist and chest which shall give graceful curves to the contour of the body, and enable the dress to fit smoothly...[with] the ease, comfort, elasticity and grace of action which come from wearing a Coraline Corset...[in place of] her former instrument of torture."

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