An area of personal interest that runs adjacent to my work as a costume designer and costume artisan is the unconventional use of conventional materials and the creative reuse of repurposed materials. This research also focuses on keeping costume technology as “healthy” as possible by exploring processes and materials that are primarily water-based or low-toxicity. This piece has been featured in three exhibitions: Wearable Expressions at the Palos Verdes Art Center, Corset as Art: Past and Present at the Southern Utah Museum of Art, and The Big Squeeze: Corset as Art in Times Square, New York.
This example of sustainable work is based on an Elizabethan-style corset constructed from a felted sweater. I have always been intrigued by iron corsets and find the Elizabethan examples particularly compelling for their scale and intimidating silhouette. The piece combines elements of two historical corsets: the silhouette of an Elizabethan iron corset from the collection of the Museo Stibbert in Florence (ca. 1590, n.14147) and the pierce-work of an orthopedic corset from the Musée Galliera collection (ca. eighteenth century).
The combination of rounded shapes on the peplum and back sections of the Galliera corset creates an interesting juxtaposition with the geometric crisscross pattern on the front, all contained within the formal silhouette of the Elizabethan corset. It is the original “business in the front, party in the back” decoration—a motif that would later be enthusiastically adopted by fetishists.
As I researched iron corsets, I discovered that there is surprisingly little consensus about their use. Most costume historians agree that they were primarily worn for orthopedic purposes, designed to correct spinal deformities, while many surviving iron corsets are actually Victorian fetish reproductions inspired by Elizabethan originals. In my own piece, I incorporated a busk as the front closure, despite the fact that the busk was not invented until the nineteenth century. Its presence acknowledges the Victorian fetish reproductions while simultaneously referencing the corset’s orthopedic origins and function as a supportive device.
As I considered how a woman wearing an iron corset might have felt—particularly one worn to accommodate or correct a spinal deformity—the image of the beetle from Kafka’s The Metamorphosis came to mind. Both woman and insect are defined by extreme limitations in movement and mobility. The supportive yet constricting nature of the iron corset seemed closely linked to the exoskeleton of a scarab beetle: without corset or exoskeleton, the body lacks structure and form. This connection between woman and insect ultimately shaped my color palette, which draws directly from the iridescent greens of the scarab beetle.
