Of Breasts and Corsets... The Good, the BAD, and the Painful

Big Girls...Don't Cry.

If you have ever been to a renaissance fair, you know there are a couple things that you should expect, cleavage is one of them.  Truth be known, there really wasn't much cleavage in the renaissance and the many bundles of joy you see at the fairs are completely inaccurate.  

Look Ma...No Cleavage Line!!!

Surely the peasants must show more skin....

Nope.... actually they were more covered than the nobles.

So what... I want to show off what God or the doctor gave me...

Fair enough....

Unfortunately, the Renaissance Gown is not very friendly to a woman's girls. (Mostly because it was never meant to show them off in the first place.) The result is that they get stretched, pulled, tucked, creased and overly much abused.  For now we're going to concentrate on those voluptuous women who have big girls to deal with.  My cousin is one of them.  First lets look at the traditional way of dealing with lovely lady parts.
  

Solution #1: Step REALLY out of time period:   This is when you wear a corset that is Victorian, Edwardian, Colonial, or modern rather than Elizabethan, Tudor, etc.

What is the difference?

To put it simply... Shape.

The Elizabethan Corset is designed to work as a tube or an oval with a slight slimming at the waist.  Whether being a noble or a peasant the shape was the same.  Peasants of course could not afford the whalebone stays, so there was more folding and tucking.  

The Colonial Corset was shaped more like an ice cream cone.  The rounded neckline and the long torso are sometimes confused for Elizabeth's extended front.  If you look, however at Elizabeth's picture, her bodice still maintains the tube styling rather than a cone shape.

Edwardian fashion created the figure eight pattern that we commonly see in Steam-punk fashion.  The corset travels over the hip and narrows the waist intending to give the hourglass figure rather than a cone or a tube.  The front of Edwardian fashion is still cone shaped in comparison to the Victorian style.  

Victorian corsets are very figure eight shaped.  The intention is to create an equality between the bust and the hip.  A highly accented waist is the result.   This particular corset does the most to support a woman's chest thus you tend to see a variation of this style at the fairs.   While Victoria was an amazing queen, she is off from Elizabeth by over two hundred years.  

Most online corsets of this nature put your girls on a shelf.   Frankly the shelf support does not look particularly comfortable to me...not to mention the inevitable sunburn.   The downside of this corset is that if you have a very big bust they tend to flatten out and deform.  While this may look pleasing in the mirror, from the side or a distance the view is not a pretty one...  

The picture to the left shows a woman in a Victorian Corset. She has bought the corset too small, thus when she cinched it, her ample bosoms are now up to her throat, her shoulders are pushed higher than her collar bone which reduces her neck and makes her look in a word....strange.  It also has misshapen her breasts to the point where they look comical rather than alluring.   I have to say I'm a little worried about the strength of the stays on that corset.  The look as if they are supporting more than they were intended.


 If you really must wear a Victorian Corset to a Renaissance Fair, keep in mind the silhouette that is intended by this corset.  The corset is intended to cup and support the breast not put them on a shelf.

If you have been very well endowed, it would be best to have a corset especially made for you rather than buy a online corset.

Solution #2: Be a wench: A favorite of the fairs.  Whether you are a bar maid or a pirate wench this look is a very popular style for busty babes.  All it takes is a peasant blouse and a partial bust or under corset and the girls become very prominent.  The internet is littered with oogling pictures of women in these types of costume.  Again, without the support I'm not sure how comfortable this style is.  I would still put it way above Solution #1.  And, it gets points for being somewhat accurate to the time period where Solution #1 is null.  

Downside,  if you are very big, you always look like you're about to fall out of your shirt.  (That may be the point...)  While this is very popular with the men, again I wonder about the support...  Is there any at that point?  To me, having several plastic stays digging like darts into my breasts doesn't look like it would be comfortable, but to each her own.

Solution #3-- Belly Dance.  The Belly Dance costume, if you are up to having this much skin show provides a natural support for women.  Really if you are very large, this looks to be the most supportive.  It is basically a modified bra.  However, in looking at my historical patterns, I'm not so sure how historical the modern Belly Dance costume really is.

Queen Sized:

If you are like me, you want to wear the jewels and be a noble.  I relish in the lavish jewels and fabrics that would have, in Henry's day made me a very poor woman due to Sumptuary Taxes.  Being a modest C,  my biggest problem is my girls slipping down into my dress and disappearing for the rest of the fair.  (Which actually is historically accurate, so I can't complain.)  

However, larger girls like my cousin (Triple D's) has a double edged sword.  One side--she has enough mass to actually have cleavage in a standard Elizabethan gown.  Other side-- there is a great deal of pain involved at the end of the day. 

My tutorial, with this gown will be to make a corset which will provide all of the skin my cousin wants upside, without having red rings around her breasts at the end of the day.  

Let me show you the problems I'm going to resolve:

First: digging--I'm not sure why, but there are many corseted dresses online for sale that promote this look.  In my experience breasts are supposed to be rounded not pinched in the middle. It is common to see this problem at Renaissance fairs.  Women who are wearing the right corset find themselves forced to squeeze their girls in, binding them to their chest and giving them a noticeable breast version of a muffin top.  This dig can appear on the shoulder, under the arm pits, and most noticeably right across the breast where it comes in contact with the corset.  On particularly sunny days these poor women already are bright red along the lines of their bodice simply due to the pressure from their gown.  My cousin has this problem with her current dress. It is actually easy to solve, but it requires you to make your own pattern... I'll take it step by step using a real pattern as a base.  :)  

 Second: Creasing-- All I can say is ouch.  The picture of this crease looks so painful, I can only imagine what this girl is going through.  The cause of this problem is the same as above, except instead of pulling the girls together in the front, the breasts have spread out and are finding escape under the armpit--I know, lovely.  This can also be controlled with a adapted pattern.  Again, this is a problem of the design of the Elizabethan corset in conjunction with Renaissance Fair women's desires to have a huge amount of cleavage at the fair.  As I said before, the style of the renaissance corset is basically a tube.  For the hourglass figure, if you get the  corset tight enough in the middle to give you the right waist, the girls have to be squeezed so tight, you can actually hear them shrieking in pain as these poor women wander the fair.

So... How do you make your own pattern???

Let's Get Down to Business:

Next Post-- Creating a adapted renaissance pattern from an already existing pattern.