Period Corsets® contributes to Reflections of Culture Exhibition

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Period Corsets® is delighted to support the arts and education.

We recently made a donation to the Fernback Museum of Natural History in Atalnta Georgia. Pictured below is our pink brocade coutil Julia c. 1860 corset in the exhibit. Please read more about the Reflections of Culture Exhibition below.

Quoted from the Fernbank Museum:

Reflections of Culture draws from Fernbank’s permanent collections, including the Dorothy Methvin McClatchey Collection, to showcase the fascinating similarities among cultures throughout the world and the different ways of expressing cultural information through the things people create and wear.  

Reflections of Culture focuses on the most personally expressive of those objects—personal adornment. People around the world decorate their bodies with clothing, jewelry and various forms of body modification, including piercing, scarring, painting, shaping and tattooing. Personal adornment allows people to express their cultural identity and provides a particularly effective means of communicating social, political and economic information about themselves and the society in which they live.

Discover what culture is and how it is expressed through a variety of contemporary and historic objects. Artifacts are placed alongside captivating photographs, which provide a context for how the objects are worn, by whom and why. Educational interactives throughout the gallery allow visitors to further explore how personal adornment is used to express culture.
Learn more about the Dorothy Methvin McClatchey Collection.
Reflections of Culture Exhibition

Period Corsets: What is a Toile?

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"Toile is the name of a fabric that entered the English language around the 16th century[1] from a French word meaning "linen cloth" or "canvas" — particularly cloth or canvas for painting on. The word toile in modern English has multiple meanings. 
Etymology
Middle English toile, from French toile ("cloth"), from Old French teile, from Latin tela, ("web"), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)teg ("to cover") (see List of Proto-Indo-European roots in Wiktionary).
 Uses:  Test garment
A toile is a version of a garment made by a fashion designer or dressmaker to test a pattern. They are usually made in cheap material, as multiple toiles may be made in the process of perfecting a design. Toiles may be called "muslins" in the United States."
Sited :  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toile


Making a Toile at Period Corsets®: pictured left is a prototype Kristina c. 1660 corset and  below, a custom corset for a client.

The toile is the start of the three-dimensional garment. The exciting first look of the pattern in fabric, the designer's dreams manifest themselves in cloth reality. It is essential in the costuming process.  For Period Corsets® we make toiles to ensures a custom garment fits the performer perfectly, and the designer reviews and adjusts the style lines as needed.  Once we've made our toile, we fit it, and then perfect the pattern.

We make multiple mockups (or toiles) of each corset we develop for our line--it’s part of our extensive research process. We distill the shape of the period to fit the modern body and encapsulate the style and silhouette of an era.

Keep an eye out on this blog for the toiles Period Corsets® will be working on in the summer months.

Period Corsets® Congratulates our Graduates! Summer vacation is here.

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Period Corsets® came to the rescue of one graduate who wanted to walk down her graduation aisle in a corset. Tanielle was not a theatre student or an actor. She was graduating and she coordinated her whole outfit based on one central element – her corset.
She called us with a corset emergency.  The corset she ordered from another corset company was not going to work out. She needed a bright red silk corset. So we scheduled her fitting and made her corset just in time for the ceremony.

It matches those roses to perfection.

Photo Courtesy of Tanielle

Looking good and congratulations on your diploma!