Jennie Faries and Gina Castater know a thing or two about corsets.
On a Sunday afternoon, Faries, 46, a graphic designer with a master's degree in lighting and clothing design, and Castater, 58, an executive assistant who once slid into her share of costumes at the Raleigh Little Theatre, took a stroll through a local Adam & Eve boutique. One look at a skimpy, black vinyl corset and their thoughts went to - the Colonial period.
"Even in the Colonial period, yes, most women wore them," Faries says. "But they wore them much looser in those days. They were not really attempting to mold the body."
"You know," Castater says, "they just actually believed that you needed support."
Faries continues the thought. "Which, actually, if you were a working women in the Colonial period, you needed it. It was back support."
"I mean, could you connect that to those big, black belts that [people] wear at Home Depot and when they're lifting weights and they're trying to go for back support? Yes. And they also believed, over a long period of history, that the unsupported figure was just wrong."
Nowadays, the two aren't wearing the support systems for practical reasons only. Like other women, they've rediscovered the corset as a style statement. These days, corsets, which also spiked in popularity in the 1980s, can routinely be found in a number of circles: the goth kids, the fetish crowd, Civil War re-enactors. And of course, if you're a pop star who also doubles as a fashion plate (Lady Gaga! Rihanna! Katy Perry!), corsets are an essential part of your wardrobe.
Still people can be a bit put off when they see someone out-and-about wearing a corset. Just ask Charlotte freelance writer-editor Jaym Gates. The proud owner of a quartet of corsets, she's been known to be a major topic of conversation whenever she leaves the house wearing a corset outfit.
"I've had people ask to take pictures of it just because it is a corset, and they're so unused to seeing something like that," she says.
Keep the back straight
Gates, 22, considered herself the T-shirt-and-jeans type before some friends hipped her to the power of the corset. "I had friends who spoke very highly of them," she says. "I just saw how good they looked and all that. I started trying them out, and I discovered that it's actually something really fun to do. And it does look great. And it adds a bit of that elegance to fashion that is often missing."
For some, the corset evokes the 16th century, when the undergarment first began appearing around women's torsos and under their clothing, flattering their busts and accenting their cleavage. It reminds others of the Victorian era, when corsets began to shape women like hourglasses, narrowing the waist and supporting the breasts.
And then there are other memories. Before she discovered the theater and embarked on wearing corsets on- and offstage, the scoliosis-stricken Faries wore a steel-boned medical corset for a year when she was 16.
"And that's when I discovered I love corsets that keep my back from hurting," she says. "Because it keeps everything lined up. You don't get your spine out of alignment or put pressure in the wrong places."
Castater doesn't mind showing off one of hers, a $450 black number she ordered from a California corsetry called Romantasy, which sent it off to England to be made. "[There were] lots of instructions on how to put it on and how to take care of it, because it's an expensive piece of clothing," she says.
Made for the customer
Often, corsets are custom-made, so interested buyers must find a dealer (like Meschantes Corsetry, located in Cary) that'll take measurements and build a corset. That can be expensive, so Gates began looking for affordable corsets on eBay, where a basic corset can go for $20, and a figure-shaping corset can cost over $100. As with Faries, Gates found corsets that not only looked good on her, but also helped with back injuries she suffered while training horses. "A corset helps because it provides that stability," says Gates. "So, yeah, it can hurt. But, on the other hand, if you maintain good posture, it's really not all that uncomfortable."
Shaping up
Gates says she also knows people who wear them for the practice of waist training: People (both men and women) wear corsets to modify their bodies and reshape their figure. Kayla Esguijian, a Raleigh-based model and dancer for the local Hellcat Vixens Burlesque crew (where she is better known by her stage name, Porcelain), practices that form of training. She wears her corset around the house and, every half-hour, she tightens the laces. "I was actually pretty adamant about it when I first started doing it," says Esguijian, 23. "But now, it's just an occasional kind of thing."
Esguijian is aware of concerns that the practice can cause internal damage without proper precautions. "If you don't do it the right way, if you're not safe about it, you can seriously hurt yourself. So, I wouldn't suggest it to anyone if they don't know what they're doing."
Still, Esguijian enjoys wearing a corset, mostly because it's an eye-catching piece of outerwear, an item that might make you the talk of the town when you're out painting it red.
"Just don't try to run or bend over quickly to pick something up," says a giggling Gates. "Because, from personal experience, you will fall flat on your face."
