The Course of the Corset
The History of Underclothes. By C. Willett and Phillis Cunnington. (Michael Joseph. 3os.) THE Doctors Cunnington are firmly established as the historians of British clothes, and they have now gone deeper and further, below the surface, to the props, foundations and accompaniments of modern dress, from the sixteenth century to the year 1939. My title is not a wilful or meaningless paranomasia, since the corset 'and its derivatives are exceedingly prominent in this admirable and amusing survey. Nor can we be surprised at such 'a thing, for this formidable apparatus has for centuries eitheib supported, controlled or manufactured the rotundities of the female torso.
It is admittedly very difficult to compile a volume of this kind, except when it deals austerely with objects in a museum ; and there is likely to be a fitful and irritating oscillation between elaborately technical description and the intrusions of rather skittish comment. The authors have bgen generally successful in avoiding these extremes, and it would therefore be ungenerous to pick out lapses or redundancies. One might, perhaps, more reasonably criticise the propriety of including certain adjuncts (in spite of the authors' ingenious and foreseeing defence) under the general title of the work ; and I think one may justifiably regret the absence of children's underclothes, except for an incidental reference, for these are domes- tically and socially a most important item. I must also note, with surprise, the absence of any illustrations from Hogarth, an informative delineator of underclothes in the eighteenth century.
Something might well have been said, I think, about the porten- tous woollies of old 40, and the general treatment might have been less energetically dMted towards the erotic appeal of youthful
underwear. And here, with great respect, I would venture to question the authors' analysis. The shifting of emphasis from one part of the body to another, with a view to the direction or provocation of sexual appeal, surely does not depend upon the
oscillation of " male interest ": it depends rather upon the desire to overcome that familiarity which breeds indifference and thus renders necessary a new concealment or a new exposure on the part of the female, This, I suppose, is the principle which controls the design and inipulse of the mode at every period. And in proof of this, let older readers recall the history of the leg ; let them remind themselves of the pin-up Kirchner girls, dear to the subalterns of the First World War.
Again; something might have been said about the Byronic shirt and its implications, the shirt of poetical and, romantic natures. This might have been more interesting than a rather prolonged examination of the " cami " complex of the 'twenties, the bockers and the knickers. But the diagnosis of Edwardian sensuality is remarkab'y shrewd and accurate : it was " highly refined and probably unconscious . . . the ultimate illusion of an unreal world."
The choice of quotations in the book is wholly admirable, and shows wide and well-directed research. The illustrations, though variable in quality, are carefully chosen ; the book itself is produced _la a very agreeable, though not ,a distinguished, manner.; it is a highly commendable volume—pleasantly written, full of entertaining and surprisiqg detail, and offering the results of a highly specialised and intelligent study. -C. E. VULLIAMY.
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