Page:Costume, fanciful, historical, and theatrical (1906).djvu/253

XVII The origin of the word "stays" comes from stay, to support; the term "corset" may have been developed from "corps": the term "corse," however, must not be confounded with it, and Planche considers this should apply merely to the bodice of a gown. The earliest method of making the stay was with pieces of cane, and this may be compared favourably with a variety obtaining as lately as in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This was made of steel with broad pieces of steel shaped to the hips, and clamped or hinged under each arm, being straightly stiff at the top of the front and the back, where it reached up to the shoulder-blades. These frames, however, were not primarily used to reduce the waist, for they were worn over a corset, so that the dress might yield not to the weakness of a single fold, and that the stomacher might. present a front of unruffled smoothness. A development of this stay showed it curved at the top, front, and back, somewhat in the outline of those we wear now, but clamped together down the back, and made of the stiffest of iron, and decorated with countless meaningless-looking little holes and apertures. This was the style adopted by Catherine of Medici, which permitted her the questionable joy of reducing her waist to thirteen inches.

Christine of France, we are told by Jacob the bibliophilist, wore a "justaucorps" embroidered in gold and studded with precious stones; this was a remarkable shape, not defining the waist at all, and finished off with an indented basque.

The first mention of what may rightly be termed the corset is at the end of the fourteenth century, when the dresses cut low in the front