Corset Revival by Natalie Wilmott

The Story Behind the Corset: The inspiration for this corset revival begins in 19th c Paris,
in the glittering atmosphere of the Folies Bergère—a place where spectacle,
contradiction, and modern womanhood collided. The Folies was not simply a music hall;
it was a site in which female visibility, desire, and labour were openly staged and socially
negotiated. Women working and performing there were commonly subject to moral and
sexual judgement. This environment provides a historical lens through which to consider
the corset itself: a garment similarly burdened by judgement, often read as provocative
or excessive rather than as an expression of the individual wearing it.
A central art-historical reference is Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882).
The barmaid stands frontally before the viewer, framed by mirrors, chandeliers, and a
blurred crowd reflected behind her. Despite her visibility, her expression remains distant
and ambiguous, suggesting an inner world that is not offered up for the viewer’s
consumption. Although she occupies a role historically entangled with commodification
and desire, Manet refuses to render her as emotionally available or narratively resolved.
She is present without being possessed, seen without being known.
It is within this tension that the word nice emerges as a conceptual anchor. When
encountering a corset, viewers may bring immediate assumptions of sexual availability
or moral character. Nice deliberately interrupts this reflex. It proposes an alternative
reading: that the person within the corset is complex, individual, and human. The term
promotes kindness, asking what might change if being seen did not immediately invite
judgement.
The word nice is materially embedded into the corset through paint, stitch, and
repetition, appearing on the body of the garment, on sewn vintage letter tabs, and across

ribbons. These ribbons—black, white, red, and white lace—extend outward to form a
skirt-like structure, their movement and marking evoking dance, rhythm, and the act of
sashaying across the floor, recalling the physicality of performance spaces such as the
Folies Bergère. Hand-painted motifs drawn from the venue’s exterior frontispiece are
applied directly to the corset, translating its graphic ornament and theatrical typography
into an intimate, bodily scale and allowing the architecture of spectacle to be reimagined
as wearable surface.
The materials themselves are sourced through up-cycling, drawing on vintage ribbons,
lace, and embellishments that carry traces of past use and labour. This process honours
existing materials by reimagining them into something new, bringing the past into the
present and positioning reuse as an act of creative continuation rather than nostalgia.
The restrained palette of black, red, and white situates the corset within both historical
and symbolic registers—black as elegance and containment, red as desire and
disruption, white as fragility and intimacy. Hand-painted motifs reference the geometry
and confidence of the Art Deco, while Swarovski beads and crystals act as agents of
light, recalling mirrored interiors and chandeliers.
Historically, the corset began to disappear at the dawn of the Art Deco period, replaced
by looser silhouettes that reflected women’s increasing social and physical freedom. In
reclaiming the corset here, it is no longer an instrument of control but one of expression
and choice.
This corset is an ode to women’s liberty and empowerment—not through rebellion alone,
but through elegance, care, and niceness. In reclaiming the word nice which I was
discouraged from using in school for its perceived vagueness, the word argues for
kindness as a meaningful and necessary value. If everybody in the world was at least nice
then it would be a better place.