Clothing Definitions — definitions of garments and clothing terms from Apparel Search
Stays are an old type of corset. The lower edge of stays hangs over the dress or skirt, the opposite of a corset, which covers the hip. A pair of stays was typically handmade, and surviving examples are older than about 1860, in some regions 1870. Stays normally have shoulder straps, unlike a waist cincher. Over time stays became shorter and shorter, and the line of development ends at the brassiere. The garment belongs to the history of structured underwear, alongside the corset, the girdle and the union suit.
A stays have normal shoulder strap opposite a waist cincher.
| The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/stays). 11/13/04 |
Stays were the everyday foundation garment of women's dress for roughly two centuries before the industrial era. A stiffened bodice laced closed, stays shaped the torso into the silhouette each period demanded, supported the bust, and gave dresses and skirts a smooth base to hang from. Because they were handmade to the wearer, no two surviving pairs are quite alike: boning channels, stitching and materials record the hand of a particular maker and the body of a particular client. That individuality is why costume historians treat stays as documents, evidence of how ordinary clothing was actually made before ready-made sizes.
The construction details carry the definition. Boning, in whalebone, cane or similar stiffeners, ran in stitched channels through a strong linen or cotton body. Lacing, usually up the back, set the tension. Shoulder straps kept the garment from slipping and distributed its pull, a practical feature the later waist cincher abandoned in favour of a shorter garment that gripped the waist alone. The lower edge matters just as much: by ending above the hip and flaring over the skirt, stays left the hips free in a way the longer, hip-covering corset of the later nineteenth century did not.
The vocabulary shifted as the garment changed. Stays is the older word; corset became the standard term as manufactured, steel-boned garments replaced handmade ones in the nineteenth century, and the fashionable silhouette moved and lengthened. Then the direction reversed: fashionable support shortened decade by decade, from the full torso to the waist, and from the waist to the bust, until the brassiere separated bust support from torso shaping entirely. Reading stays as the first point on that line, rather than as a curiosity, makes the whole history of structured underwear easier to follow: each later garment is stays with a different length, a different material, or a different job.
For collectors and costume makers, identification runs on the points above: handmade construction, shoulder straps, an edge that clears the hip, and a date before roughly 1860 to 1870 point to stays; a longer hip-covering line, machine stitching and steel boning point to the later corset.
Stays end at a lower edge that hangs over the dress or skirt, while a corset covers the hip. Stays also normally have shoulder straps, which distinguishes them from a waist cincher. Surviving stays are typically handmade pieces from before about 1860, or 1870 in some regions.
Stays became shorter and shorter as fashions changed, covering less of the torso. That shortening is the path that eventually leads to the brassiere, which supports the bust alone instead of shaping the whole torso.
Yes. A pair of stays was typically made by hand, fitted to the individual wearer. Handmade construction is one reason surviving examples are individual historical garments rather than standardized manufactured products.