Hourglass or bust: Museum airs its unmentionables

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Costume Museum of Canada curator Jenny Bisch with examples of undergarments from the past. (PHIL.HOSSACK@WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM)

"MY  GIRDLE is killing me!"

A new exhibit at the Costume Museum of Canada brings to mind that classic line from a Playtex 18-Hour Girdle commercial of the 1960s.

In it, an elegantly dressed woman revealed the secret agony that foundation garments inflicted in the name of fashion.

Today's girdle may be known as "shapewear" and cause less pain, but women are still squeezing themselves into undergarments that suck in bulges, smooth out bumps and help to sculpt the illusion of an hourglass figure.

"Foundationwear is about shaping your body," says CMC curator Jenny Bisch. "It's not just underwear. It's got a structural purpose.... Some of the terms used for corseting come from military terms for types of armour."

The exhibit, with its wealth of lace, satin and garter clips, is titled Foundations: Underneath it All. It's on now through Jan. 17 in the smaller of the Costume Museum's two galleries.

All the garments, from chemises to corselettes to panty girdles, are from the museum's own collection.

Bisch has organized the dress forms into 11 pairs. Viewers can see typical foundationwear of, say, the 1950s, next to a dress form displaying a SSRq50s dress. Every dress is black, to emphasize the ideal of a fashionable silhouette.

The oldest artifact is an antique "stay" dating from 1730 to 1740. Made of pale green silk brocade, it's essentially a boned corset, with lacing up the front and back.

It's contrasted with a 2009 bra-and-panty set in which the cutting-edge bra is made of "spacer" fabric.

Augmenting what Mother Nature gave us has been a theme of "unmentionables" for centuries. The show includes a hoop crinoline, a wire bustle that gave 1880s ladies "a little booty," as Bisch puts it, and an 1890s bustle pad with ventilation holes for keeping cool.

Around 1900, the tiny-waisted Gibson Girl look was exaggerated by a wired chemise called a "bust distender." Gibson Girls' bustlines didn't show two distinct breasts, Bisch adds. The goal was a pigeon chest or "monobosom."

By the 1920s, flappers wanted a boyish silhouette and wore early bras designed to diminish their bustlines.

The show includes a perforated all-rubber girdle from the 1940s -- the kind that left a rash-like pattern on the skin from its tiny holes. Later girdles made from stretch panels were often called "roll-ons."

Rubber was rationed in the war years, Bisch notes, so there's a '40s bra in the show made with corset-like lacing at the back instead of elastic.

The 1950s brought ultra-feminine silhouettes and gave rise to the cone bra, says Bisch, who chose to display a strapless 1950s brassiere with huge cups and such heavy wiring, it can be described as "architectural."

The CMC is showing lots more than its undies these days. The main gallery also has a new show running to Jan. 17, Collection Highlights, consisting of 35 favourite garments chosen by staff and volunteers from the museum's holdings of more than 35,000 artifacts.

That exhibit features vintage children's sailor suits, lavish women's gowns and capes worn to the opera circa 1890 to 1905, women's tailored suits from the 1940s, paper dresses from the 1970s, a collection of vintage purses and much more, including several examples of the museum's replica garments, which are used for historical fashion shows.

This weekend is packed with events at the CMC (109 Pacific Ave. in the East Exchange), beginning tonight with a Fabulous Clothing Swap. There's still time to join in, if you get your bag of gently used clothing and $10 participation fee to the museum by 3 p.m. (call 989-0072 for details).

Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the museum's third annual Wrap Me Up craft sale is on (visit www.costumemuseum.com for hours and details). The CMC's in-house boutique also offers a wealth of jewelry, bags, scarves, clothing and giftware for Christmas shopping.

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 26, 2009 E6