Word: corset
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Unfortunately a stiffening of the national spine is increasingly essential these days. Thanks for tugging on the corset strings."-John P. Hilburn of Washington...
...rebellious young intellectuals, it was the resolute opposite of Victorianism. Against Mrs. Grundy's boned corset it set the languid flow of an Aubrey Beardsley tunic. It opposed ice-water morality with the dreggy wine of French "realism." It countered convention with Oscar Wildeish witticisms ("Where is the pleasure of having parents if you may not disobey them"). For common sense it substituted shamelessly overgrown verbiage (" 'Tears, little one,' I said. 'See how they swim like whitebait in the fish-pools of your eyes...
This was a new sales tactic in the corset industry. But Gossard was in the midst of a $600,000-a-year ad campaign (double last year's), which it hoped would make it the biggest company in the field. With a potential market of 55 million women over the age of 15, U.S. corset & brassiere makers now sell $400 million worth of goods a year, are heading even higher. Of the more than 350 companies in the industry, almost half have been started within the past ten years...
Curves & Kangaroos. Gossard was founded on a corset-string in 1900 by a Chicago buttons & bows dealer named Henry Williamson Gossard. At the time, corsets were laced from the rear and the agonized, swaybacked "Kangaroo figure" of the Gibson Girl was the vogue. In Paris, Gossard bought a dozen corsets which were not only straight and more comfortable than U.S. models, but which laced conveniently up the front (thus obviating the need for a maid or husband at the other end of the drawstrings...
...Wobble. Though the Associated combine was liquidated after the crash, Gossard continued to make money, helped by the economies of Production Man Savard and Paris dressmakers' rediscovery of curves. Gossard also helped develop a lightweight, two-way stretch fabric called powernet (used by all big corset and girdle makers today), and got a long lead by using it first. Says Savard proudly: "The fattest kind of woman doesn't wobble when she wears powernet...