I want to wear a bustle

   October tends to be a sensitive month for me along the lines of clothing. every year during October, someone will usually ask if I am a witch. And I don't mean as a Halloween costume.This is never a question from someone who knows me. Usually it comes from a person who feels that either I need to be saved or has decided I am a witch and is trying to make small talk about it. Always the reason for the assumption is the clothing I wear.
I have not been asked yet this year... however the month is not over.

This bit of my history and my current focus on corsetry and my own clothing line has me looking at current clothing alot.
And truth to be told: I don't like current fashion.
  Clothing available off the rack is made from cheap materials in styles that care not one bit about what a real person's body looks like.  But I will admit, the structured garments I find attractive all come from eras in history where clothing was part of the cage women were kept in.
  Victorian corsets, the long heavy skirts and steel framed bustle made it possible to walk, sit (with some practice) and generally just look pretty. The freedom I have to climb truss or even ride a bike comes in part with the t-shirt and jeans I am expected to wear. Even the working class of that era never wore the gilded cage that women in higher classes wore.  Many of these woman lived in homes with large libraries locked, out of their reach. They had to cross dress in order to become writers and doctors.

   But as I make my corset I have reworked the pattern to fit my body. I will not wear it tight in order to slim inches off my waist. I have no intention of damaging myself in order to be thought beautiful. I am not even looking to current feminine ideals. I am stepping into this clothing as an expression of what I find beautiful. Not what has been defined for me.


   'Our goal is not to return to a time of oppressive morals, but to challenge the assumptions sewn in long hems and high necklines: no longer are our dresses a uniform of domesticity (or our trousers a pass to play with the boys). We define ourselves creatively, in ribbons that hold our goggles, and frills that hide dangerous gadgets.'
                              issue 6 of steampunk magazine an essay entitled A Corset Manifesto by Katherine Casey

This piece sums up my feeling when I look at old patterns and imagine how I could rework them so that I might still fit in my car.


Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months  - Oscar Wilde