Stays and Body Image in London

The Staymaking Trade, 1680–1810

Lynn Sorge-English

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781138661424
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317323341
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This book fills a significant gap in the literature on eighteenth-century social and cultural history. Starting with their production and trade, Sorge-English looks at the intricacies of the staymaker's craft, the role of gender in the design and manufacture of stays and the changing shape of stays over time.

1 STAYS TRADE AND PRODUCTION IN LONDON

Staymaking was an occupation which was important not only to the tradesperson for his or her own livelihood and that of his family, but his work affected many others, both directly and indirectly. Although stays were worn by women from all walks of life throughout their lives, and although they altered the natural shape of women’s bodies, no one has carried out an in-depth material analysis of the artefacts themselves. Yet this is necessary in order to understand not only the importance of stays to all involved in their production and consumption, but also to comprehend the magnitude and all-consuming pervasiveness of the trade. The chapter will first analyse how the staymaking trade fitted into the trades structure of London, with some emphasis placed on regional production for comparative purposes. It will move on to discuss the architecture of stays, with the last section bringing to light something of the raw materials and construction of stays.

Tailoring and Staymaking

‘… Stayes, which is the body of the Gown’:¹ Separation of Staymaking from Tailoring

The development of the tailoring trades structure in England bore a direct relationship with that of France, and so it is fitting to begin with a brief discussion of the separation of staymaking from tailoring in France. Tailors there, almost all of whom were male, created the outer garments for both men and women until 1675–80, when females took over the creation of mantuas and other major garments for women. However, along with the continued creation of male garments, it fell within the purview of tailors to carry on making stays and court gowns for women, as they had done in the seventeenth century. As Francçois Alexandre de Garsault said in 1769 in his Art du Tailleur:

Before the year 1675 … the Tailors generally made all the clothes of men and women, but in that year Louis XIV decided to give to women, the right to dress their own sex; and since this time, the Tailors have kept themselves apart … The Tailors of Corsets … kept the right to make Corsets …²

The generality of Garsault’s words belies the complex nature of the employment structure he was attempting to describe. Jennifer Jones argues that the passing of responsibility for creating female clothing from male to female hands was fraught with tension and strife, and ‘constituted a particularly contested arena’. She further explains that although women ‘were permitted to use whalebone ribbing baleine and other materials necessary to make and perfect their clothing’, this was hotly challenged by the tailors who retained the right to create court bodices and gowns.³ Although Jones does not say so, it is likely that the intention was never to allow women to create complete whaleboned garments, but instead to use whalebone as a complementary material only. Clare Crowston tells us that it was the gradual development of the manteau, or mantua, under which separate stays needed to be worn, which was one of the causes of conflict between the tailors’ and seamstresses’ guilds. Tailors maintained the right to create the court bodice, but separate stays were not the same thing, at least from the point of view of the seamstresses. In 1727 the seamstresses’ guild won the right to create garments with whalebone, including stays and hoops, although designing and creating court bodices and gowns was still reserved for the tailor.⁴

The gendered change in production in England appears to have been analogous with that in France, but as yet scholars have not carried out an in-depth study similar to Jones’s and Crowston’s. Although Arnold, Ginsburg and Styles have all remarked that females took over from males in the making of female garments around the turn of the eighteenth century, the exact time of this change appears not to be clear.⁵ Determining something of its origins is important, though, since this change has implications for several of the gender-related issues being investigated here. Randle Holme’s 1688 work, The Academy of Armory, or, A Storehouse of Armory and Blazon, provides a place to start. Possibly England’s earliest actual book of trades, it contains, among other things, ‘The Instruments used in all Trades and Sciences, together with their Terms of Art.’⁶ Arnold used this work as evidence that females took over the making of mantuas for their own gender by the time of Holme’s writing, but my reading of his work differs to the point where the opposite seems to be true.⁷ Holme specified that in 1688 tailors were still making all garments for women, including stays, gowns, petticoats and mantuas which had only recently begun to be worn. In his section, ‘Terms used by Taylors’, Holme describes the mantua:

A Mantua, is a kind of loose Coat without any stayes in it, the Body part and Sleeves are of as many fashions as I have mentioned in the Gown Body.⁸

This implies that in 1688 Tailors were still responsible for creating the mainstay of women’s garments. However, in his ‘Names of things made by Seamsters’, in addition to including items such as shirts for men, neck bands, ruffs and the like, Holme also mentions ‘A Roman Dress, the Mantua cut square behind and round before’. His description of ‘A Seamster’ is revealing:

The Seamster or Seamstry work follows next in order to that of a Taylor; this being work to adorn the Head and Hands and Feet, as the other is for the covering of the Body; nay, very often the Seamster occupieth the room and place of a Taylor in furnishing the Nobility and Gentry with such conveniencies as serve the whole body, especially in the Summer season⁹

This might well indicate how women came to take over many of the gendered responsibilities of tailors, beginning gradually with creating the simplest of garments for their own sex, particularly for those of the upper sorts, when tailors were overworked with orders during the London season. Therefore, the change from male to female might have been so gradual that it was never recorded asa change worthy of note. Unlike in France, nowhere was it mentioned among the primary sources investigated for this study that females also took over the responsibility of working with whalebone, and so the common understanding among scholars that tailors continued making stays in England when women began making mantuas seems to be accurate. It is clear, though, that the actual division of labour within the staymaking trade did involve females, an important division of labour which was not without implications.

Sometime between 1688 and 1747 females came into their own as the creators of many of the garments for their own gender, even if the exact date remains uncertain. Written in 1747, both R. Campbell’s The London Tradesman, and T. Waller’s A General Description of all Trades, differentiated between Taylors and Mantua-makers, defining the gender of the latter as female.¹⁰ Regardless of how and exactly when the separation occurred, it was undoubtedly well underway by the turn of the eighteenth century. Overall, scholars have devoted little time to addressing the relationship between tailoring and staymaking. The consensus seems to be that tailors made stays, but the terms tailor and staymaker are often used interchangeably in modern scholarship. Ginsburg, for example, does not mention the art and craft of staymaking, nor does she discuss staymakers, other than to mention their numbers in 1752.¹¹ Waugh, whose 1954 work, Corsets and Crinolines, is still the most in-depth empirical analysis of stays to date, devotes little attention to their actual creators. In her words, ‘corsetry is a highly specialized branch of dressmaking; the designing, cutting, and fitting is usually done by men and the execution by expert needlewomen.’¹² An earlier article addressed the relationship between tailoring and staymaking, but not in depth.¹³ Yet both the connection and the differentiation between tailoring and staymaking are important since they directly affected the design of stays, which in turn, had an influence on women’s lives.

‘Stays … may very well be called a Branch of Tayloring’:¹⁴ Relationship between Staymaking and Tailoring

A close reading of Holme’s work shows that in 1688, the tailor and staymaker were one and the same. Stays during much of the seventeenth century were part of the gown, and were covered with the outer fabric. Holme’s words, ‘The Stayes, which is the body of the Gown before the Sleeves are put too, or covered with the outward stuff’,¹⁵ imply that the stays formed the actual bodice of the gown, and were then covered with the outer dress fabric. In this way, the two pieces were treated as one, and served as the foundation upon which the sleeves and skirt were mounted. At the time of Holme’s writing, however, mantuas, which were loose garments cut in one length from shoulder to floor, and pleated into fit the upper part of the body, had also begun to be worn.¹⁶ Holme pointed out that stays were not attached to the mantua.¹⁷ It is very likely, however, that since stays would have been the only garment to have given the torso the elongated cone-like shape as seen in engravings and portraits of the period, that they were worn under the mantua, as a separate garment. The 1680s marked a period of transition from gown to mantua, and from stays which were all-in-one with the bodice to stays which were separate garments. It is my contention that staymaking became a separate branch of tailoring in the 1680s, too. Certainly books of trades from 1747 list staymakers as separate from tailors, and differentiate responsibilities carried out by each. Campbell goes into considerable detail regarding trades. In his table of contents, following the category, ‘Of the Taylor, and Trades concerned in furnishing Apparel’, he lists fifteen trades connected with tailoring, none of which is that of staymaker. Instead, woollen-draper, mercer, haberdasher, fine-drawer, wool stapler, wool comber, worsted men, wool-card-maker, clothier, fuller, scourer and setter, hot-presser, packer, piece-broker, sales-man and rope-maker are the trades he chose for this section. Furthermore, it is clear from reading each description that this entire category of trades pertained only to the making of clothing for men. Campbell’s section ‘Of the Stay-Maker’, on the other hand, lists only four categories:

1. Materials and Process of making a Pair of Stays.

2. Stay-Stitchers.

3. Whalebone-Dressers, and the Manner of preparing it.

4. Bodice and Child’s Coat-Maker.

His remarks here leave little doubt that the staymaking trade was closely aligned with the tailoring trade, that the staymaker was male, and that his work inv...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• List of Figures
• Introduction
• 1 Stays Trade and Production in London
• 2 Stays Provision and Supply
• 3 Stays and the Body Through the Life Cycle
• 4 Consumption: Class and Gender
• 5 Aesthetics of Body Image and Representation
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index