Petalos Corset

My final project to hand in this past semester was a corset. It was for my corsetry course, wouldn't you know, and the assignment was to create, you guessed it, a corset. Any corset at all. It could be draped, flat drafted, based on a historical pattern, or a combination of anything you wanted at all.

I am a fan of certain elements of a corset, but as a whole I'm not necessarily in love with the look of a corset, in particular the typical contemporary corsets that are on the market. It's got to be something really beautiful and not overly gothic, fetishistic, or cutesy pie for me to really fall for it. So, when designing my corset I wanted it to be something that reflected my personal tastes. That meant, above all things, no lace-ups. 

I altered a historically accurate pattern of an Elizabethan stay to fit my body, and drafted a peplum for the bodice. I wanted the peplum to resemble the petals of a flower, or the bulbs of various flora such as that of a lily. I used a strong cotton/Lycra blended fabric, flat steel bones at centre front and back, spiral steel bones in the bodice, and plastic boning in the peplum.

Oh, by the way, I did this in the few days I had immediately after the Serpentinata madness ended, and the corset was actually due. I busted my butt in the studio, pulled an all-nighter with my pal Laura (thank goodness she was there as moral support!), and handed my corset in in time. It garnered rave reviews from my prof, and I was super excited to do a shoot with this.

Obviously i couldn't wait, because here are some images of this baby, on me. I had intended to try out a "look" for the corset, and by the time I had the shoes on, I thought I was halfway to a shoot so why not try out some stuff. I added some makeup, false lashes, accessories, and set-up a camera, self-timering my way through an American Apparel inspired photo shoot. Even featuring the AA hooter shorts, from my time back in the day as an Edmo AA employee. Anyway, enough chit chat. Prelim Pocahontas Petalos glam. A real model with a John Smith still to come.