The longer fitted bodices of the 1880’s bring longer corsets.

The bustle returns and grows to it’s largest around 1885

Both spoon busks and regular busks are commonly used .

Aall busks are "dished" (a dished busk curves inwards at the base, twords the abdomen).

Baleen or whalebone was expensive and becoming more difficult to aquire. There were many different materials used to stiffen corsets. Some of the most popular were cording, spring steel, Coraline, and Featherbone. Coraline was "manufactured from natural fibers of the  Mexican Ixtle plant. It consists of strait, stiff fibers bound together by two strands of thread passing in opposite directions". Featherbone was manufactured from the quills of feathers.

"By the 1880s the corset had become a very elegant and desirable object in a woman's wardrobe and much attention paid to its design and execution. The rapid growth of the corset manufacturing industries meant that there was greater variety in materials, color, size and fit. The most expensive might be made of satin, brightly colored corsets also became more acceptable."  -Lucy Johnstone, curator of fashion from 1800 to 1914 at the V&A

*** I am placing the photos of antique corsets within the year in which I feel it belongs, it is not exact, I try.

The ads however are from publications of that year.

(Please keep in mind that the diagrams shown were patented concepts.

Though designed and patented at the time, most did not become mainstream.)

Continue to next page - 1890's

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