The Menace of Tight Trousers: 1884

Fifth Avenue from the “World’s Dude” series of cigarette cards, 1888

Tight Trousers.

“Here, conductor, this man’s fainted.” The words were uttered in a tone of excitement by a stout woman about 40 years of age recently in a Columbia-avenue car, and as she spoke a slim youth who was seated beside her in the corner of the car fell forward and dropped in a heap upon the straw.

With the assistance of a gentleman, the conductor lifted the senseless youth on to the seat, and two minutes later, as the car passed a drug store, pulled the bell-strap, and. followed by half a dozen interested passengers, five of whom were women, carried him into the store, where he was placed on a lounge in the back room.

A doctor was hurriedly summoned, and after a disappearance of about ten minutes the young man and physician came out of the room, which had been kept closed, arm-in-arm. The young man’s face was still pale, and he walked with a very perceptible tremor.

After a few moments’ rest the young man got on another car and went away, and the doctor said: “This is the fourth case this month I have seen of the deadly effect of wearing tight trousers, and had not that young man been attended to promptly he might have been in great danger.” “Tight trousers?” queried a bystander, incredulously.

‘”Yes, sir; tight trousers! Why, you cannot imagine how often we doctors have to treat cases of illness brought on by no other cause. Take that young man, for instance; his trousers were at least four sizes too small for him; not too short, of course, but too tight, and for hours and hours he had been walking about with a pressure of at least 275 pounds to the square inch on his olexii vivisectori arteries, which are situated in the calves of the human leg. This tremendous pressure forces the blood into channels not able to carry it without undue straining, and although the victim feels no pain he is liable at any moment to topple over in a swoon, and unless relief is promptly given a long and serious illness is likely to follow. It is a similar trouble to that experienced when it was the fashion for ladies to wear very tight sleeves, except that in the case of tight trousers the material is heavier, the arteries are larger, and the result apt to be more dangerous and difficult to relieve.”

The Record-Union [Sacramento CA] 5 July 1884: p. 1

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: It is rather refreshing to see the gentlemen censured for fashionable excesses normally confined to the ladies. Tight-lacing cannot be objectionable if the gentlemen choose to wear tight trousers.

Variations of the tight-trouser craze have come and gone: the well-turned leg revealed in the costume of the Renaissance courtier, the 18th-century macaroni’s breeches, and the “inexpressibles” of the Beau Brummel era, are some early examples. Another revival came in 1913, when this journalist called for resistance against the fashionable trend:

TIGHT TROUSERS? NEVER!

The other day in that windy hot-air city of Chicago a congress of men’s tailors got together and decided that us men must wear tight trousers. Then they adjourned as if the matters were all settled.

Gentlemen, husbands, brothers, sons. shall we meekly submit to this indignity? Are we gonna stand humbly to one side and let our tailor measure us for a pair of glove-fitting pants? No!–1000 (plus) times no! We have become so accustomed to the negligee and commodious trousers of commerce, in which there is room enough to locomote along the street without danger to the fabric thereof, that we do not propose to jump obediently into tight pants at a crack of the whip from a few tailors.

Besides it is a well-known fact which every bow legged man knows and no bow-legged man will admit that the average man is bow-legged. Fancy a man afflicted with bowlegs in a pair of tight fitting trousers. Imagine a man with either extremities like a brace of parentheses dolled up in tight trousers. He’d be a sight, wouldn’t he?

Not only that, but the wearing of tight trousers involves risk in polite society–risk to the trousers and risk to the wearer’s reputation. For instance, if we were to appear in a crowded drawing room wearing a set of skin-fitting trousers, we would remain standing no matter how many empty chairs there might be in the room. This would cause surprise on the part of the hostess. She would say:

“Do sit down, Mr. Newkirk.”

“Thank you awfully,” I would retort, “but I much prefer to stand.”

“How very eccentric!” she would effervesce. “Tell us Mr. Newkirk. why you prefer standing to sitting, do! I know the answer will delight my guests. Come give us the reason. ‘

And there you are! I couldn’t tell the lady that the reason for my obstinacy in standing was due to the fact that if I attempted to sit down these trousers would give way some where or other under their burden of responsibility. I couldn’t tell her that could I? Certainly not! So I would blush like a broiled live lobster, ooze cold heads of anguish, shift from one foot to the other, wring the ends of my coat tails, and at last, I would more than likely dash from the room with an hysterical streak of agony.

If I were wearing a pair of tight trousers on the street and I should pass a dry goods store just as the clerk tore off three yards of denim, I could not continue on my way with any comfort or piece of mind until I had retired to a private doorway and minutely examined those trousers. If a lady dropped her handkerchief, I could not with propriety stoop to pick it up for her. If I did something would bust and I’d prefer the lady to think I had no manners than to have those trousers go back on me in public. Confound a pair of trousers that a man must use a shoe horn to get into!

New Castle [PA] Herald 3 December 1913: p. 4

The inability to sit down in such garments was

A Standing Joke.

Tight trousers are out of fashion, and now it will be necessary to put on more street cars. There won’t be so many young man anxious to stand.

Morris County Enterprise [Parkerville KS] 10 May 1883: p. 4

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

“The Tightest-Lacing Customers in London:” 1893

 

IMPORTANT OMISSION

An exchange says a Chicago girl has just died of tight lacing—it does not say whether of corset or shoes. Wilmington Messenger.

Evening Post [Charleston, SC] 9 November 1904: p. 4

Recently a crusade has been started in England against tight lacing, led by the Gentlewoman, one of the most valuable of English journals for women. A representative was sent to interview the most prominent stay-makers. One of these is thus reported:

“I am reputed,” she said, “to have the tightest-lacing customers in London; and I think that some of the waists my stays encircle would be hard to beat. I think that some of my customers positively like the sensations produced by tight lacing, or they would never take all the pains they do to get thin, such as dieting and sleeping in corsets, as some of them do.”

“Sleeping in corsets!” I exclaimed.

“Oh, yes; a good many, especially young ladies, do; an opera stay or riding one is a favorite make for the purpose. Let me think. Yes. The largest pair of corsets I have made had a waist measurement of thirty-five inches. The smallest — well, you won’t believe me, perhaps, but twelve and one-half inches was the size. No, I don’t think she’ll be able to get them closed. Every inch under fifteen, with most ladies, means a tremendous lot of lacing in. I’ve known a young lady break five or six silk laces, as strong ones as are made, in getting a pair of new stays close.”

“How small is your pretty assistant’s waist?” I asked.

“Generally about fourteen to fourteen and one-half inches. I find it best for all my assistants to have trim figures; but she has tight-laced to that extent entirely of her own free will. Many of my customers lace to seventeen, sixteen, and even fifteen inches. I suppose you haven’t seen a smaller waist than Miss Blank’s?”

“No.”

“Would you like to?”

“Yes,” I replied, “if such a thing is practicable.”

Mrs. Smith rang. In a few minutes the young lady appeared, and Mrs. Smith and she went into the alcove. Another assistant was summoned, and then a whispered consultation took place. After a minute or two, we heard Mrs. Smith ask: “Can you bear it?” and the answer, “Quite, madam.” Mrs. Smith’s voice again: “There, Miss Jones, I think the laces are close; tie them tightly.” Two or three minutes later Mrs. Smith and Miss Jones came out from the alcove, the latter incased in a long-waisted, black satin corset, which made her waist look scarcely larger than her throat. It seemed incredible that any girl — for she was little more — could breathe and move, let alone move about, without much apparent discomfort, when tight-laced to such an extent.

“Now I suppose,” said Mrs. Smith, smiling at my look of astonishment,” that you will now believe what I told you before — namely, that a well-cut corset and strong arms will make a woman’s waist almost any size she may wish. See!” she exclaimed, taking up a measuring tape off a chair, “Miss Jones’s waist is just thirteen — thirteen and one-quarter inches.”

“How long could you bear being laced up like that?” I asked.

Miss Jones smiled. “Not very long — it is rather painful — half an hour; perhaps an hour.”

Mrs. Smith said, just as we were leaving: “You know, I think tight lacing becomes a positive mania with some women. There are two of my customers, for instance — theatrical people — who usually wear their waists about nineteen inches. Well, when at home they both lace themselves as tightly as their maids can do it.” Another states that at some schools the girls are not only encouraged, but forced to lace. Five different women said that they made corsets for girls of sixteen and under with waist measurements of fifteen inches, and all agreed that girls are put into corsets much earlier than formerly.

The Argonaut [San Francisco, CA] 30 January 1893

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Mrs Daffodil suggests that the reporter, who perhaps fell short of a “positive mania,” was still titillated by the subject. Debate over tight-lacing began in the Elizabethan period and goes on even unto the present day. Mrs Daffodil has seen articles about how sleeping in corsets is supposed to promote a slender figure. “Waist-training,” is the term used—as if one’s waist was a sporting dog to be taught to “heel” and “fetch.” The anti-tight-lacers, who were often seen as cranks and, worse, dress reformers, warned of tragic outcomes such as this one:

An actress in a London theatre has just died of tight lacing. The victim of this reprehensible custom had just finished a song and danced off the wings, when she collapsed, calling on her husband in agonized tones to unlace her gown. Before a doctor could reach her dressing room she was dead. Every vital function had been paralyzed by the lacing, and a weakness of the heart was aggravated by the exertion of her performance. It can, however, be said of the generality of woman on the stage that “tight lacing” is obsolete with them. Waists of whatever fashion fit the figure better than they did in years gone by, and there is a generous roominess of bust measure which admits of healthful expansion of the lungs every time the breath is drawn. No lesson will be learned by the fate of this London actress. She represents a bad style of corset, and some natural disarrangement which might have proved fatal had she run for the train or skipped upstairs in a hurry.

Boston [MA] Herald 17 January 1895: p. 6

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

Mrs Jenness-Miller, the Apostle of Culture in Dress: 1890, 1894

One of Mrs Jenness-Miller’s creations. From The New York Library Digital Collection

DRESS IMPROVEMENT

Mrs. Jenness Miller Entertains a Large Audience of Trenton Ladies

Association Hall was again crowded yesterday afternoon with an assemblage of ladies who had gathered to hear and who listened delightedly to the apostle of culture in dress. Mrs. Miller appeared in a princess gown of old rose brocade satin, with Watteau back and side draperies. She advocates dress improvement, not dress reform. The old reform was offensive and inartistic. She spoke of the relation of women and their dress, of the Syrian women and their costumes, of the peasant women and how their lives are in harmony with their apparel.

Women ask, can these changes be made? Yes, and with less trouble than the ordinary changes of fashion, and Mrs. Miller cited the wonderful changes in dress made in the past thirty years. In the age of the hoop skirt women appeared as animated pyramids. Next was the pancake age, then the kangaroo with hump on back and hands in that fashion. Then came the pancake fashion with the skirts tied back, displaying the entire form. That style was worn by saint and sinner alike and was not considered vulgar.

The next style was the Hottentottish bustle, when the greatest changes occurred. The principal reason for desiring and advocating a change of dress is to make a better race of men and women. Had the speaker the training of the coming generation of girls, she said, there would not be so many invalids. The specialists’ signs might be taken down from Maine to California. What we need is that mothers of the coming race shall have freedom of the vital organs according to the laws of nature. To accomplish this, moral courage is necessary, but in that respect most women are deficient. We are too prone to follow a leader and care too much for public opinion. Mrs. Miller then illustrated the fashionable pose and caused much laughter.

Nature provides curved lines while fashion, on the contrary, converts them into angles. Art must be true to itself and not to fashion. Art has no novelties, the human figure never changes, it is always in proportion. The women who contemplate this change need not expect to appear better at first; there will be a transition period in which they must exercise and learn to pose correctly.

Then Mrs. Miller appeared in a street costume of tan silk, trimmed with heliotrope velvet and lace. The skirt had box plaits inserted in the seams and presented a very graceful appearance. The waist was fastened on the shoulder and under the arm. Being asked how she fastened the dress, she showed a new device which is quite novel. On the shoulder seam, around the armhole and on the underarm seam, was sewed a cord, into which the hooks could be easily fastened, without the inconvenience of looking for the eyes.

While in this costume, Mrs. Miller explained her manner of dressing and the undergarments she wore, viz., a union suit, a divided skirt of pongee silk, supported by low neck waist of the same material, and occasionally an equipoise waist without bones.

The next dress she wore was her girl’s dress, of which she is particularly fond. It was made of pale pink China silk, with Grecian border on skirt. There was a plain fitting foundation with several rows of shirring around the waist, the upper part being full and loose allowing much freedom for the raising of the chest and the expansion of the ribs. This dress is suitable for a miss or a woman of thirty years. Mrs. Miller then illustrated the ungraceful position in which many women site, having the waist line totally obscured caused by sitting on the spine. Then the rolling movement of the body was given, which, if properly exercised, places the vital organs in their proper relations, and with a regular diet will greatly improve the health.

Development of the throat and neck is desired by most ladies, but all are not aware that by tight lacing the floating ribs are compressed and necessarily push the neck bones into prominence. The two beautiful curves of nature of sacrificed for the waist line.

The fashionable woman of the period is a series of bulges that were not seen in the Venus of Milo. Upon asked her weight, she replied: “One hundred and fifty pounds in sheets and Turkish baths.”

Conventional summer dress was Mrs. Miller’s next theme. The material was an olive green lace-striped silk, with dark green velvet, lace, and gilt braid for trimmings. The dress was draped to form an overskirt which Mrs. Miller said breaks the long graceful lines and renders it unbecoming.

The rainy day costume consisted of a navy blue waterproof serge. The skirt reached halfway between the knee and the ankle; the waist consisted of an ordinary Eton jacket and silk vest. Leggings completed this outfit. In winter equestrian trousers, which furnish protection from cold and rain, are worn. Here Mrs. Miller related an amusing incident which indicated the difficulties a woman experiences in stormy weather:

A poor working woman with a bundle, baby and an umbrella in crossing a gutter was obliged to hold up her dress and in this attempt turned the little one upside down, which at first amused the speaker, but which afterward she regarded as a very pitiful sight, which showed the absolute necessity for a reform in rainy day costumes.

Many women consider the short skirt vulgar, and raise their skirts in crossing the street and display an array of underwear which is quite immodest. “I believe in legs,” said the speaker, “I am sorry for the people who have limbs.” The Almighty gave us legs as well as the men and they are not ashamed of them. Why are there so many moral cowards? We must have the courage of our convictions. When asked if the skirt could not be worn a little longer, Mrs.  Miller replied that it would not be artistic and that more foot would be visible than leg, making the foot appear much larger.

Mrs. Miller believes in plenty of pockets and thinks that man’s superiority began with them. The next costume was an evening gown. It was a combination of rose satin and brocade, trimmed with ribbon, and as she was in a great hurry to conclude her address she removed her dress before the audience and put on her maternity gown. It was a princess dress which could be unlaced and enlarged by means of a cord inserted in one of the darts and another one across the front below the waist line. A Grecian drapery was fastened over it and made a very appropriate gown. Trenton [NJ] Evening Times 5 May 1894: p. 5

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: As may be obvious from this article, Annie Jenness-Miller [1859-1935] was a dress-reformer and popular lecturer. Her “improved” gowns were often made of exquisitely rich materials by European couture houses to her designs. Illustrations of her improved fashions are less the greenery-yallery favoured by aesthetes and ridiculed by  Punch, and more conventionally fashionable garments, which appear a bit blousy around the waist without a corset. She lectured around the world, except in Britain, where no agent would book her lectures and where the British public, ever conservative, refused to adopt her divided skirts. She was a prolific writer and published her own magazine, first titled Dress, but later called The Jenness-Miller Magazine. One might suggest that she enjoyed the limelight and controversy arising from her choice of crusade. Certainly Mrs Jenness-Miller had her critics: 

MORAL EFFECT OF DIVIDED SKIRTS.

A WOMAN’S CRITICISM OF MRS. JENNESS-MILLER AND HER THEORIES

To the Editor of the New York Times:

To be a successful reformer one must be able to demonstrate in one’s own person the perfect confirmation of one’s theories. A homely woman might as well attempt to change the order of the universe as to influence her sex on the subject of beauty.

The success with which Mrs. Jenness-Miller, the dress reformer, has met is due not to a mental capacity in the last unusual or to any very original ideas, but entirely to the fact that she is a rather handsome woman with a fine figure, and her gowns are artistically beautiful. So far as physical well-being goes, Mrs. Jenness-Miller does, indeed, make a charming illustration for her lectures. Inadvertently and unconsciously, however, she contradicts herself when she tells her audience that divided skirts, chemilettes [a union suit meant to replace corset and petticoat], spiral garters, and the like will affect the honesty, truthfulness, and general uprightness of the race. If Mrs. Jenness-Miller really believes this, how does it happen that she, who has lived, so to speak, in these moral elevators—divided skirts, chemilettes, spiral garters, and the like—for the past five or six years, regards it as perfectly honest to sell tickets at $1 each, or $5 for a course of seven lectures, advertising seven different topics, and to make the third lecture of the course simply a repetition of her first, with fifteen minutes at the utmost devoted to the advertised subject?

Mrs. Miller’s wit cannot be listened to twice without a feeling of ennui. Her hits at man’s curiosity, suspenders, and legs, the unwinding of petticoats on a windy day were amusing when first hear, but fell decidedly flat the second time. Nor was her lecture sufficiently profound for even the dullest not to grasp her meaning in one hearing. Obviously it escapes the mind of this charming woman that although she herself has reached such a high plane in the march of progress as to call legs by their proper name and wears divided skirts, the rest of the world cannot rashly venture to put so great a strain on their mental powers as to listen to these thought-burdened theories twice in so short a time.

Mrs. Jenness-Miller by no means confines herself to the reform of undergarments. Our watches are attacked! In the first lecture, according to the watch which millions of unreformed people are stupid enough still to regard as nearly veracious, the fair lecturer greeted her audience at 11:25, and at 12:35 by the same timepiece she was gone. Yet this Venus of Reform calmly and positively declared that she had talked two full hours. When some one in the audience demurred she smilingly remarked: “Women never realize how time slips by when they are looking at pretty gowns.” We must acknowledge that if chemilettes make truthful men and women the watch had best hide its face forever.

VAILLANT JULICO.

New York Times 30 March 1890

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes.

Men Who Wear Corsets: 1889 and 1903

European dandies are adopting women’s wear. Corsets are a case in point. There have been little paragraphs in the London paper every now and then for the last few months touching upon the increasing demand for men’s corsets. During a trial in Paris between the partners of a corset firm the defense revealed that one of the branches of their manufacture were men’s corsets. The judge having demanded an explanation it was shown that more than 18,000 corsets were made yearly for Frenchmen and 3,000 were shipped to England, principally for army officers. German officers also created quite a demand till a rival Berlin firm offered a cheaper article.

Any Bond Street dealer will tell you, without the slightest hesitation, that he employs dozens of workwomen to embroider dainty garments for his male clients. One shop never sends out a garment without embroidering initials and feather stitching on it, and another devotes its energy to decorating the legs of man’s socks with silk initials and other needlework.

The illustration [above] for this article is by F.G. Long, the American cartoonist, in London. The corset on the chair, the nightie on the wall, the stock, the embroidery, and the make-up appliances are all drawn in exact detail. Lincoln County Leader [Toledo, OR] 30 January 1903: p. 3

MEN WHO WEAR CORSETS

VERY PRETTY ONES, TOO, AND THEY COST $10 OR MORE

How to Tell When a Man Has One On.

Is a Man More Proud of his Shape Than Woman?

It is Difficult to Find Where the Expensive Shapers Are Made.

There is in one of the corset manufactories of New York a little blonde haired woman who has for many years made a specialty of men’s corsets, and has established an extensive business in a western city. She had a man trained to take the measures and fit the corsets, and frequently she or her forewoman never saw the customers for whom they made corsets regularly. It is a very paying business, for men rarely question the price of an article they wish to purchase, and men’s corsets are always made to order and never kept in stock. A woman the shape of a tub and a woman the shape of a broomstick will buy the same make of corsets in different sizes, and somehow fit herself into them; but if a man wants a corset at all he wants it to fit, and the cheapest ones made to order cost $10.

They do not differ materially from a woman’s corset in construction, being made of the same material, only with heavier bones and stronger steels. They differ very materially in shape, however, being shorter and nearly straight up and down, though the constant wearing of the corsets conduces to add fullness of chest, which compensates for the pretty bust curve and slope to a woman’s waist. They are usually made of gray sateen or coutil, but occasionally a very fastidious customer is found who orders the daintiest of materials and decorations.

REGULAR BEAUTIES

One of the lady’s customers always wore satin corsets of a delicate color, flossed, and laced with silk. He was very stout, and broke a great many of the silk laces, which a woman will wear almost a year without breaking. One of his latest orders is a Nile green satin corset flossed and laced with cardinal silk and trimmed at the top and bottom with fine white lace, for which he paid $25 with no demur.

Another customer was so extremely modest that he never went into the store, but his wife took his measure and ordered the corsets, fitting them on herself when they were finished. It requires three visits to insure a perfect fitting corset—one for the measure, which is taken very carefully; one for the fitting, when only half the bones are in and the steels basted in place, and one for the final examination, when everything is finished. After one perfectly fitting corset has been made, however, only one fitting is required.

Corsets are worn mostly by actors, the fit of whose garments furnishes at present a large proportion of their stock in trade. Then there are clerks who sit bending over desks all day and half the night, to whom corsets are frequently recommended by their physicians as a help toward straightening their curved spines, men who from some injury or physical imperfections are obliged to wear them, and a fair percentage of dudes who rejoice in a small waist and a smoothly fitting coat. An ambitious cutter in one of the swell establishments, where a suit of clothes may be purchased for the price of a brown stone block, has an idea of winning an heiress for his wife at some popular summer resort where he spends his vacations, and accordingly arrays himself in all the elegance the establishment affords, hooks himself into a double boned corset, and lays siege to the hearts of the fair ones. Before he adopted the corset he buckled a broad belt of heavy leather about his body at the waist, but as he grew stout this expedient lost its efficacy.

A man’s corsets are as readily detected by his fellow men as the faintest touch of rouge on a woman’s face is always discovered by her sister woman. Gentlemen says that a man in corsets goes upstairs like a woman and walks differently, and that if you observe him closely for a few minutes he will give a  little peculiar hitch to his shoulder , as if he were endeavoring to pull himself up out of the corsets. It was by watching Berry Wall mount a flight of stairs that it was fully determined that he was laced into a snugly fitting corset. His wife accompanied him and they made the same motions in the ascent. Both the King Dude and his roly poly little chum wore corsets regularly on important occasions. It was at Mme. Griswald’s on Broadway that the pink haired dude returned a pair of baby blue satin corsets trimmed with lace, after they had been fitted three times, to have them made a half an inch smaller, and his anxious perplexity was very amusing to the mischievous merry maiden who fitted them on.

THE PRINCE WEARS THEM

It is no secret that Osmond Tearle wore corsets, and that Kyrle Bellew wears them still. The noble Antony has them made in London in a little shop in Conduit Street. They are not trimmed with pink lace or embellished with embroidery, which is the only surprising thing about them, but they are deliciously small and very short, not more than six or eight inches up and down.

In the same shop the Duke of Beaufort has the pink satin, lace edged corsets, which he makes no secret of wearing, manufactured and embroidered with his monogram surmounted by a ducal coronet. He is an old, decrepit man, with a wrinkled yellow face and a fringe of white whiskers, and so bent over with age that the line of his corsets is plainly discernible through his dress coat. It is said that the Prince of Wales affects them too, and that that is why he has abandoned horseback riding. Corsets are worn quite extensively by men in Paris, and all the handsome officers in the German army wear corsets under their uniforms.

Thought corsets are worn by men in New York, it is extremely difficult to find out where they are made. There is no special manufactory for them, and though most of the first class corset places receive orders for them occasionally, they are very reticent on the subject, for any publicity given to the fact would destroy the business altogether. There is one bright woman corset maker on Fourteenth Street who advertises to make a specialty of men’s corsets and receives a great many orders, which she fills simply by taking women’s corsets of large size and removing the gores in the bust and taking out some of the fullness at the hips. Merchant tailors would hail with delight the general use of corsets, as they would render the fitting of garments much easier, and enable them to keep smooth and in shape much longer.

It is the stout men who take to them most kindly and who suffer most in wearing them, and it is hinted that two of the handsomest “dress coat actors” in New York resort to their use on the stage. Watch the man who never leans back comfortably in his chair, whose coat does not pull in lines at every button or gradually work up toward his shoulders, and whose chest is unusually round and full, and if he seems at intervals to be pulling himself up out of his garments by the shoulders and goes upstairs with an inflexible back, you may safely infer that he is laced into a pair of $10 stays, though he wouldn’t admit it any sooner than a woman would own her shoes were too tight. Wichita [KS] Eagle 15 August 1889: p. 7

 Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Men wearing ladies’ clothing is an old and cherished tradition in Britain, both on the stage and in aristocratic circles. In fact, the best-dressed lady Mrs Daffodil has ever known was a footman to a ducal house. His delicate colouring, drenched-violet eyes, and exquisite wardrobe made him popular with gentlemen in need of a feminine escort when it was really not in their nature.  He was taken up in a raid on an establishment in Cleveland Street, but thanks to his intimate connections with some of the noblest families in England, he was allowed to emigrate and became a fashionable designer of lady’s underclothing under the name Sissi et Cie.  On the other hand, Mrs Daffodil dislikes intensely the rigidly corseted Hun officers with their revolting dueling scars, monocles, and fund of smoking room stories about the Rape of Belgium. Mrs Daffodil feels they do protest too much.

Mrs. Desmond Humphreys, the London novelist and keen satirist, who wrote under the name of “Rita,” has nothing good to say about gentlemen in corsets: “What of the effete boudoir boys who give smoking parties to each other in order to display the latest thing in satin corsets and lace-frilled tea coats?” adding that such fads “might make the angels weep.” She blames the sensation-mad Americans.

The “King Dude” was E. Berry Wall, a rich New York socialite and clotheshorse. Wall was proclaimed “King of the Dudes” in 1888 by a New York newspaper. He was known to make ludicrously large numbers of costume changes in a single day. He dressed his chow dogs in evening attire made by his own tailor. His followers were shocked to their core when he was married in a cutaway coat and brown trousers, sans gardenia.

George Osmond Tearle and Kyrle Bellew were both English actors: Tearle was primarily a leading man; Bellew was a stage and silent screen actor with a sensational profile. The Duke of Beaufort [1824-1899], was a soldier and Conservative politician. He served as Master of the Horse and was the creator and editor of the Badminton Library of sporting books.  

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.