A Victorian corset for scoliosis and back pain
A Victorian corset for scoliosis and back pain
While sewing a historical corset for my scoliosis, I dove into how corset myths connect to Victorian medical history, sexism, and disability justice. Spoiler alert : it's a familiar web of ableism, corsetry health scares, questionable Victorian medicine, and so much more. Oh, and in the meantime I drafted, adjusted, and franken-patterned an asymmetrical corset pattern to fit around my scoliosis curvature, avoid back spasms or aggravating my fibromyalgia, and support my shoulders and posture.
Wait, corsets can treat back pain?
When debunking corset myths, we're quick to tell people that not everyone was tight-lacing and corsets were not torture devices. But that doesn't mean a corset can't cause back pain, especially if the corset fits poorly or the wearer (like me) has back issues already. Every corset I’ve worn in the past gave me horrible back pain, but a good corset is a necessary foundation to almost all Victorian dresses.
Victorian medicine was a disaster (of course)
Some Victorian doctors blamed scoliosis (sideways curvature and rotation of the spine) on corsets, while others thought medically-augmented corsets and corset-like back braces could treat it! Researching the connections between corsets and scoliosis led me down the rabbit hole of 19th century medical journals on scoliosis treatment. It turns out that all of the issues I've run into dealing with my back pain in the 21st century-- sexism, ableism, eugenics, the bracing vs physical therapy debate-- were all major parts of Victorian medical treatment too. Victorian doctors (and modern ones too) had such a strong focus on straightening out the spine for the benefit of everyone other than the patient. But as long as I'm comfortable, I don't care whether my spine looks crooked or not. My corset pattern is not symmetrical, nor is it intended to look symmetrical on my body, because I would rather be pain-free and well-supported than hide my scoliosis.
The right fit
To draft this pattern, I looked closely at what made the most comfortable corset I'd ever worn (one I modeled for Dark Garden) so special. After carefully noting how the shape of the hip spring avoided pressure that would cause back spasms, I combined and modified patterns from Aranaea Black, Marion McNealy , and Ageless Patterns to build a completely customized corset. The shoulder straps and additional boning in the back help with my posture and take strain off my muscles, and the side-lacing in the hips allows me to wear bustle pads underneath the corset to cushion my lower back. The lacing gap isn't straight up and down, but it follows the curve of my spine to avoid putting pressure directly on my skeleton. The finished pattern has small differences in the left and right sides that make it comfortable for my shape, and provides a great silhouette!
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This is what happens when you try to slouch in a corset :
So when I tell you that this corset helps with my back pain . . . hopefully you’ll understand why.
Hi, I’m V, and in addition to my habit of dressing up in really old clothes, I have like three different flavors of chronic back pain. First there’s the scoliosis, which is a 34-degree spinal curvature in between my shoulder blades. Then there’s the fibromyalgia, which is code for “your muscles are tying themselves in knots 100% of the time and we don’t know why”. There’s also all the garden-variety back pain that comes from a life spent alternately slouching at the computer, and leaning over things like cutting tables and my clients’ hair at my day job.
A corset is absolutely no substitute for medical treatment, which I am currently getting a lot of of for all of those things. Relying on a corset to create good posture for you can actually make back pain worse— we'll get more into that later. Let me clarify that I am not a daily corset wearer, nor do I tightlace, waist-train, or even lace myself that much smaller. I need a corset so I have a base to build my 19th century dresses from. Your average Victorian corset-wearer seems to have found their corset about as comfortable-slash-uncomfortable as we early 21st century people find our bras. Yeah, it’s nice to take it off at the end of the day and let your whole upper body go flop, but it’s also supportive and gives good shape under your clothes and if it fits you well, you don’t notice it most of the time.
There's a lot of reasons a corset might seem inherently uncomfortable, but that is a topic for another video! The relevant one right now is fit. The whole reason I’m making my own corset is that I bought a perfectly well-made one that didn't fit right, and it gave me really awful lower back spasms. It is absolutely possible for a corset that doesn’t properly fit the wearer to be painful, especially when it’s worn for a long period of time or doing strenuous work. Lina Piprek’s video goes into a lot more detail, but this is one of the major reasons actresses in films find their corsets uncomfortable— the production schedule allows time for a 20-minute fitting, not a two-day wear test. The corset that caused me so much back pain was okay during a two-hour rehearsal sitting in a chair, but not for a long day singing and dancing on a concrete floor in full costume.
Last summer, I made a video about custom-drafting an asymmetrical corset pattern, in the hopes that would solve my problem. The more I wore that test corset, though, the less happy I was with it, and I still got some back pain wearing it for long periods of time. I was unsure what to do and put the project aside . . . until Carynn of Dark Garden Corsetry, who I’ve modeled for in the past, brought me the corset she wanted me to wear for one of her shop’s video projects. I put it on to film, and . . . wow. Not only did it fit me, it was comfortable. I wore it for the rest of the day to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, cooked dinner, and cleaned my apartment, and was still pain-free.
Carynn let me take some measurements off the corset before I returned it, as well as some video for reference. The front and back were fairly straight, but there was really dramatic hip spring towards the sides. My lower back is quite flat and my hip spring is at the sides of my body, so this was keeping pressure off those areas and avoiding muscle spasms.
I started work on this in early February and then had to stop for two months, ironically due to my back pain flaring. So, I'll do my best to walk you back through how I got to this pattern. Aranea Black publishes some amazing free PDF corset patterns, so I found the one that looked most like the Dark Garden corset, and printed it out in what I thought my size. I'm short, so I shortened the pattern pieces to what I thought was the right total length. However, on account of my unusual proportions, this produced a mockup that was not only too short, but far too big in the bust. The pattern uses your full bust circumference to determine which front pieces to use. My scoliosis makes my right shoulder blade stick out a lot, so my back accounts for a lot of that measurement. The cups were definitely not right. A second mockup in a different size got me a better fit in the bust, but was shaped so incorrectly I didn't even film it.
It was at this point that I started looking really closely at the Dark Garden corset and trying to alter the pattern accordingly. What followed was a lengthy process of slashing-and-spreading pattern pieces, franken-patterning, and three and a half more mockups. I wish I could say I remember what I did, but I don't, because this was back in February. Eventually I found my way to a pattern that started with the front two pieces from the Sylvia pattern, and the side and back pieces from Marion McNealy's "Lorna" athletic corset pattern, all with major modifications. I removed nearly all the hip spring from the front and back pieces, and moved it into the two side pieces to create a dramatic curve there. Both the Lorna pattern and the Dark Garden corset had the hip spring in the front side of the side pieces, presumably to avoid sewing a steep curve to another steep curve. That got me as far as this mockup, which was extremely crooked— and no, that's not just my spine, that's crooked cutting— but it was good enough to start adjusting. I made some small changes to the bust, adding more room towards the front of the cups and less at the sides. I also graded the two side pieces down a little bit aiming for a two-inch lacing gap. The next mockup was a wearable one, made from unbleached cotton canvas, twill tape, and cable ties. I took the opportunity to practice techniques I hadn't used before, like adding a waist tape. After putting this corset through its paces, including a circuit training session {card} and an afternoon-long Edwardian shoot in the park {card}, I brought it back to the table for one last round of adjustments. I made two small tweaks for my asymmetry : I nipped the waist in a quarter inch at the right side seam, to make the curves at each side look balanced. I also added a quarter inch to the right side back piece, so I'd have enough extra room for the shoulder blade that sticks out there. I then made two modifications that weren't as common. The first was to open up the side seam below the waist and add lacing, so I could wear the corset over my bustle and hip pads. Padding under the painful ill-fitting corset did help, and this will let me take pressure off my lower back and hips if I need to. The second was to draft shoulder straps and extra support for the back panel, like this Ageless Patterns {photo} reproduction. My 18th century stays had straps, and I've actually worn them to help with shoulder pain before. The tricky thing thing about corsets and back pain is that they do the work of holding you upright, which your muscles are meant to be doing. This is why I said a corset that helps with back pain isn't a substitute for physiotherapy and medical treatment, because building the muscle strength and alignment is necessary too, and some back pain might need other kinds of medical treatment. But, if I'm going to wear a corset and it's going to do that work, I want it to be supporting where I really need help, which is my upper back and shoulders. Putting all this extra boning in on the diagonal makes it more flexible, keeping my range of motion and not adding pressure. And these shoulder straps are going to loop around to the front, they're really carefully placed so they don't sit on the more painful knots I have near my neck. They're going to bring my shoulders back where they should be instead of letting them roll forward, so there isn't all that strain on the muscles between my shoulder blades.
Okay. We have a pattern. I chose my materials months and months ago : a gorgeous pointe-shoe pink corsetry satin, and the same lightweight but sturdy cotton twill I used for my stays. All the boning will be synthetic whalebone, which is really flexible and molds to the body well. After the brief interruption caused by two months on bed rest, I finally got back to my worktable . . . only to spend a considerable amount of time working on what turned out to be another mockup.
I may have just succeeded in sewing what may be the most expensive and emotionally painful mock-up in the history of sewistkind. Apparently the only material you can trust to give you accurate information about whether your corset pattern fits, is your corset material. When I made my wearable mock-up— my first wearable mock-up— I made it out of cotton canvas. And apparently the cotton canvas, despite being relatively heavy, treated with sizing, very solid all over, very firm, plain weave, . . . stretched. A lot. Like three-plus inches. This corset, which is made out of proper like corsetry satin and twill and everything, did not stretch. At all. This came out with a waist that is three inches, at least, too small for me. It sort of maaaybe is an okay size in the bust, but it's way too small everywhere else. Like from the underbust all the way down to the bottom of the corset through the hip it's just several inches too small. This is basically like a finished fully fledged corse, and I’ m going to have to find some way to salvage this. I’m going to have to scrap this for parts after putting so much work into it and that is infuriating.
We're going to do some pretty substantial pattern modifications on this thing. I’m going to grade every piece of the pattern up an eighth of an inch below the underbust. Then i'm gonna do some additional grading because I want even more room than that. I’m going to add back the additional width that I removed just from pieces three and four at the sides. On pieces one and two right by the bust, Idon't need a ton of room there ,but I am actually going to grade up the center front piece a quarter inch on each side because I do want . . . like this seam is completely in the wrong place and I do want like a little bit more room here so things sit properly. I’ve also noticed that this area is just coming in too low on me and even though there's enough room, things are just spilling over the top a little bit. Which is saying something, because I don't have very much to spill over! So this is going to get raised half an inch. I think I will be able to still use the back pieces from this corset, which is good because these are the ones that had the most work put in them. All of this diagonal boning took forever and I really don't want to do that again. I won't have to set eyelets again and I will be able to essentially use these as lacing strips so I can try on the round two corset as I create it.
I’ve made my new pattern pieces up without seam allowance, so I’ll have stitch lines on the fabric from marking them out.
Twill layer first . . .
. . . and then the satin. I’m making sure the straight grain is parallel to the waist line on each piece, which will make sure there’s no horizontal stretch around the body, and make the satin weave transition smoothly from piece to piece.
Instead of the weird convoluted sandwich technique I’d just tried, I’m matching each satin piece to its twill counterpart and flatlining them. The pins are placed directly through the stitch line on both pieces, at a near-horizontal angle so they don’t shift the fabric.
The righthand center front seam is just sewn wrong side to wrong side. The left side is left open where the busk loops will go through, and lockstitched in between : first forwards, then backwards, then forwards again, for extra strength.
Both front pieces are ironed open, then closed again, and the busk is sewn in place with a cording foot.
I’m using the loops to mark out holes for the stud side of the busk, which I’ve made with an awl.
I find these little clips really helpful for holding the fabric tight around the busk as I sew it in.
Now, I can finish my flatlining by basting the twill and satin layers together along the stitch line. This is a really common technique in 19th century dressmaking, so you can have the structure of two layers of fabric but handle them as once piece.
The construction seams are pinned together through the stitch lines, just line before . . .
. . . and sewn with a very short stitch length.
After detaching the center back panels, repairing the collateral damage, and sewing them to the rest of the new corset, I checked the fit . . . and fortunately, this time it was perfect.
Rather than applying twill tape channels inside the corset, which would add bulk, the boning will go in between the two layers of fabric. I’ve made a guide with tape on my machine foot for how far from each seam to sew.
Apparently you all really like it when I give history lectures, so while Past Me is sewing boning channels, let's chat a bit about the history of corsets and scoliosis. A little note on terminology : 19th century doctors on the whole had very dehumanizing attitudes towards disabled people and people with "divergent body types", and often referred to them as "deformed". These attitudes absolutely continue to do harm in the modern world, and this isn't a term to be used without properly contextualizing how hurtful it can be. They were also on the whole very gender-essentialist, and the language of their writings unfortunately reflects that when quoted.
Most 19th century Western doctors were white men, and white men have a looooooong and well-documented history of broadcasting their opinions about feminine fashion as though those opinions hadn't been pulled out of their asses. I found a fascinating thesis written by Shina Mehr Shayesteh, a historian of medicine who has scoliosis herself. It's a wonderful analysis of the essays, lectures, and straight-up mudslinging between doctors and surgeons in the British Medical Journal, which I then went and read a great deal of. It's obvious that all the problems in scoliosis and disability treatment today— sexism, eugenics, victim-blaming, dismissing patient needs, conflicting treatment protocols— all happened in the 19th century too.
Scoliosis was diagnosed in people assigned female more often than in those assigned male, so it was categorized as a "female" condition, much more than the data warranted. Doctors theorized wildly about what women were doing to make them so susceptible. Were they not getting enough exercise? Were their jobs causing it? Was it from sitting at a writing desk in school? Were their corsets weakening their back muscles? Doctors and other men wrote to magazines in a panic about the health risks of corsetry, and although plenty of women wrote back to say they'd experienced no such ill effects, they were dismissed out of hand because of their gender. One woman, writing under the pseudonym "Not a Girl of the Period" wrote a lengthy letter to The Times refuting nearly every complaint about the supposed dangers of ordinary corsetry . . . and a response in The Lancet not only refused to engage with any of her arguments, but said she deserved to die of suffocation. Just in case anyone doubted how much these men didn't like women having opinions on their own lives.
Furthermore, all of these potential causes of scoliosis were considered to be the patient's fault, rather than a result of their environment, or the simple fact that health issues and disability are often completely out of our control. People really buy into the "just world" fallacy when it comes to disability and illness, the idea that if someone had just done something differently, they wouldn't have whatever condition they have. They desperately want to believe they have control over their body and their health, so if they do everything right, they won't become ill or disabled. Rather than deal with how frightening the reality is— that any of us could become ill or disabled for reasons we can't control— they shift the blame onto the victim. There was also a really persistent attitude, thanks to a glaring mis-application of Darwin's theories, that upright posture was a defining trait of humanity as opposed to animals, in a moral sense as well as a physical one. Bad posture, including scoliosis, was seen as indicating bad character, and, of course, the eugenicists wanted this bred out of us. A medical "instrument-maker" named Henry Bigg apparently decided that if he was going to be sexist he might as well also be racist and imperialist when he wrote "The women of all dominant and civilised races always will wear, and with advantage always have worn, some form of binder or corset". His next sentence uses such horribly racist language I'm paraphrasing instead : he argues that in non-Western cultures where corsets are not worn, childbirth greatly damages the appearance (as though that's more important than childbirth being dangerous). He then argues for no less than 5 full pages that human beings are not actually built to walk on two legs, therefore they need supportive garments, and "With women, their frailer build, the development of their breasts, and their pectoral mode of respiration, the corset naturally took an ampler form than the mere loin-band worn by men". Basically, women are so much weaker than men they need corsets to stand upright. I just . . . I can't.
So this is where the corsets really come into play. These doctors were focused enough on scoliosis being a "female" condition that fashion dramatically influenced treatment protocols. There were different "camps" of doctors : the "mechanical" camp preferred external interventions like back braces, the "constitutional" camp thought exercises and strengthening were the way to go, and the "integrative" camp believed in a combination of both. This is basically the same as the bracing-vs-physiotherapy debate in modern medical care. It's also where a lot of the debate about the effect of corsetry came from. Some doctors thought corsets caused scoliosis by weakening the back muscles so the spine slumped. Others thought that back braces, for all they had in common with corsets, could correct a spinal curvature. Given the stigma and judgement women faced about their appearances, many refused to wear or argued against brace designs such as these, which stood out even under clothing. This still affects people's attitudes and treatment in the modern day : when my curvature was found, I was 9 years old. My parents refused to bring me to a doctor because they assumed that back braces still looked this obvious, and therefore I would refuse to wear one. Doctors and medical "instrument-makers" like Mr. Bigg (of the egregious racism) and American Lewis Sayre began inventing braces that had more and more in common with corsets. Mr. Bigg's metal brace was installed in an ordinary corset, but used springloaded steel plates to push the spine towards a straighter alignment. Mr. Sayre invented the plaster-cast brace, where a patient was suspended from an apparatus like this, under the belief that hanging in gravity would place their spine in a better alignment. They were then wrapped in plaster bandages to form a cast of their torso, and that cast used to create a brace that looked nearly identical to a corset, and which Sayre even referred to with the same word. This design was so popular that Mr. Bigg, despite having his own designs, said he was at one time making several plaster braces each day. Much of the criticism of the plaster brace came from the constitutional doctors, who believed it couldn't treat scoliosis effectively on its own— however, they must have missed the bit where Sayre didn't either. He followed the "integrative" approach, meaning that the brace was intended as one part of a treatment protocol that also included therapeutic exercises twice a day.
There's one final thing I'd like to point out : So much of the narrative around scoliosis in the 19th century focuses on the importance of straightening the patient's spine. With few exceptions, the chief concern of physicians and the public is that scoliosis is unsightly, disabling, and reflective of bad character thanks to those evolutionary theories. What takes a back seat is the patient's experience. Some of these medical papers are so focused on physically straightening out the curvature that they barely mention if the patients have pain or difficulty moving, or if the doctor's treatment helped with that. When society, past and present, actually considers disabilities and chronic illnesses like scoliosis instead of refusing to think about them, it isn't centered on the well-being of the person with the condition. It's about the comfort of the abled and healthy people who feel inconvenienced, burdened, and frightened by our existence. So my curvature should be straightened or hidden, because other people find it "unsightly". Because the reality of disability and chronic illness upsets them to think about. Because the "deformity" of my spine is the problem, rather than how it affects me.
The problem here is not that my spine is crooked. It's that I'm in pain.
With the boning channels sewn, I’m grading down the seam allowance and finishing it with an overcasting stitch.
The waist tape is applied following the curve of the waistline, and secured by stitching “in the ditch” from the outside of the corset.
Now the sideseam can be opened up to the waist, and grommets added for the side-lacing. This lacing-hole guide is from Amped Atelier, and I find it extremely helpful.
I’m using an awl to make holes for the grommets. You can use a punch tool, although I don’t have one.
I do have these setting pliers, which are easier and quieter than hammering the grommets in.
The bottom edge of the corset is basted shut . . .
. . . and the synthetic baleen can be cut, sanded smooth, and inserted. I was able to reuse most of the boning from my previous little disaster, but I did need a few new ones.
The top edge is basted shut to prepare for binding. I’m using straight-grain strips of my satin, carefully held in place with clips.
They’re sewn on right sides together first, then folded around to the inside and carefully stitched on in the ditch.
Only hand-finishing left! The seam allowances are whipped in place, and one grommet is set into each shoulder strap. They’ll be tied with lacing, just like the 18th century stays, so they’re adjustable.
A corresponding garment is set into the front side piece, right under the arm.
Finally, I’m adding decorative embroidery called “flossing” to each end of every boning channel in heavyweight ivory silk. This holds the boning firmly in place, and looks quintessentially 19th-century.
But! Before you get to see me in a corset, I'm gonna make you sit through a couple of Important Announcements. Firstly, you all may have heard about CoSy— but if you haven't, let me tell you! CoSy is CosTube's yearly "conference" or "convention", a four-day weekend where we put out loads of extra-special education content for you. If you were at CoCoVid last year, it's the same thing, just with an updated name! CoSy is happening from August 19th through 22nd, and will include video releases and premieres, livestreamed panels, a Discord server to meet and hang out with your fellow costumers, and several events over on Instagram you can participate in! I've definitely bitten off a little too much with my plans . . .
I'm hoping to have some more Jewish fashion history for you, and a very exciting collaboration with Tea with Cassiane that involves dance lessons and like ten costume changes. I'll also be appearing on this year's panel about disabilities in costuming, run by the lovely Melissa of SewBiased.
Okay, I think I've made you wait long enough. On with the corset!
Lacing into a corset always looks dramatic, but I’m really just taking up all the extra room I needed to maneuver the busk closed. Boned garments also want to stand away from the body, so I’m pulling the corset in close to myself more than I am compressing anything at all.
The shoulder straps can be tied looser or more tightly, for my asymmetrical shoulders.
The silhouette looks dramatic, and I’m still extremely comfortable! I’ve laced down maybe an inch and a half, which is three inches smaller than I can lace in corsets that put pressure on any of the wrong areas.
The lacing gap is *not* straight up and down, which is actually good. It’s following the curve in my spine, so there’s no pressure directly on my vertebrae.
I can open the side lacing up for more room in the hips, including room for my bustle and hip pads. These not only take the pressure of the corset off my lower back, they also distribute the weight of any heavy skirts over my hips and legs, rather than from my waist alone. And, through the power of optical illusion, my waist looks absolutely tiny.
For comparison, here’s what my 1890s outfit looks like with no corset on . . .
With just the corset added, I already have a better shape,
and with both corset and bustle pads, I can have dramatic proportions *and* still be comfy.
As always, I hope you had fun and learned something! Don’t forget to like, subscribe for more costuming-with-context, and if you’re new here come say hi in the comments. Until next time— remember to look for the real stories behind every piece of pretty clothing. I promise you, there’s always something there.
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