1740s-1760s Stays: Where's the Hip?

Edited December 2, 2020

I am having an Uh-Oh moment.

Okay, more of a D'oh! moment. I was going on my merry way  when I got cold feet. The pictures from the fitting showed a pretty thick look, and the front-most skirts (tabs) seemed useless, vestigial. How were they supposed to protect the waist and hips from the pressure of the bones by flaring outward? Something that had escaped notice during the fitting itself. Another reason why pictures and taking your time are good things.

Back it was to looking at real stays for help. Since I can't use pictures from POF5, we will look at examples from online museum collections.

Here is a favorite pair of long stays. Other than lacking a full front opening and being for me scandalously low in the bustline, in all other respects they're just what I am looking for.

They have some outward bowing in the front, which is observable only nearly to the bottom of the stays, and very wide-set straps, but what else do you notice about them? Click on the image, and look closely...

The skirts (we call them tabs these days) aren't boned. They're floppy. Look at the boning pattern down around the hips. The skirts sit right along the pelvic line: marking it, showing it off. Each bone is set on an angle, so that, I hypothesize, the downward pressure is eased a little, and the bones slide a bit over the pelvis.

Yes, yes, I am guessing here. Might the stays bite on the hips when the wearer sits? Or do those bits of fabric and the boning pattern ease the situation to bearable or better?

Here is a pair from the Manchester Art Gallery in the UK (1947.1622). Well, the skirts, such as they are, are boned, and they don't splay, and they do not seem to demarcate the hip line: instead there is a curve. I suspect that the woman who wore these was slender.

Now look at some later stays. Is hip-biting the reason why that in so many later stays the skirts are boned, and apparently heat-treated to splay out permanently, thus creating a seating on the hips with some spring to it, to mitigate any digging in?

Look at these circa 1770s stays from the Met (C.I.40.173.6a–e). The skirts are a little wider and boned and the permanent splay is apparent. They appear to be made to sit on the hip line. The stays are covered in fashion fabric so the boning pattern is invisible, but the skirts are so stiff that I am sure they are boned.

Yes, the skirts (tabs) are meant to blunt the downward force of the stays. I've read this since, and Nicole Rudolf makes this abundantly clear in her 1690s stays video. A costumer and cordwainer with years of experience, partly at Colonial Williamburg, she understands the whys and hows of stays construction the way relatively few people now do.

Well, well.

The skirts need to follow the waist line, which will differ back and front, most likely.

Where the Stays Don't Fit, and What To Do

Now that we look at the fitting pictures again, I can see that the stays are far, far too long at the sides and back, and somewhat long at the front. The natural waist is sort of marked where that wedge-shaped gap is between the side and the back.

Do I abandon this mockup? Yes. Here we have visual evidence of what can happen when you scale a pattern up "a bit" on the computer, without printing out the pattern at original size and seeing what it looks like on the body, even if on paper. If you're not careful, you can lose all original reference.

So I will draft up the pattern again, on paper this time and to the original size.

Then cut it out in brown paper bags, tape it together, try it on, and see what's what. 

I can lengthen the stays if needed by adding length at the waistline. 

To add extra room on the sides, Nicole Rudolph says you can add extra bones to the edges. This could be done either to the sides of the existing pieces for a small adjustment, as she explains. Or if the stays pieces are really, really too small, add width at the centers, so that I don't mess up the original design as much.

Then, decision time again. Do I do another mockup? Probably. However, I will cut it in stash canvas that can be used for the final, but give plenty of extra fabric room in case a bit more space is needed.

Oh, and Why to Watch Where You Set Your Fake Hips

Flipping back through pictures, I found this from several years ago: my old stays, with hip pads sewn to them.

Are you thinking what I am thinking?

Uh-huh. Fake hips go on the hips, not at the waistline. The pads are set too high, which scootches up the waistline, which nudges up the apron ties. That's one reason why in pictures I am short-waisted.

The look would be a little better if I had set the pads lower. Live and learn.

Ciao!