Kylie Minogue,in one of the costumes for her 2005 Show Girl show.

The Melbourne Age: 16.4.2005

Corsets seem to have an enduring fascination for both men and women. Fashion designers keep returning to them, and recently the BBC costume dramas, and entertainers such as Madonna, have done a great deal to revive interest in them. Early in 2005 there was a display of Kylie Minogue's stage costumes in Melbourne. It was in a public area at the Arts Centre, so it was difficult to avoid when we went to concerts or plays. I am no fan of hers, so I was not aware that she was into corsets, but several of her costumes incorporate quite serious looking models.

And on 16.4.05 the Melbourne Age had a full page devoted to an article around this photo of Kylie, who was allegedly displaying a 16 in. waist in her latest ‘Show Girl’ show, which toured Australia in 2005. In the article the reporter (Laura Barton) went to an unnamed shop to try on a corset.

She wrote"Kylie having set an irresistible challenge, I find myself being hoiked into a series of increasingly sturdy corsets and my waist squeezed from a stalwart 26 in. to a violin shaped 24 in. Yes, breathing is tricky, laughter impossible, yet I feel curiously emboldened."

A long relatively sympathetic discussion, quoting all the usual suspects (Valerie Steele, etc) concludes, after pointing out that in this era of plastic surgery corsets shouldn't be necessary, "but [what] all the collagen implants and surgical sculpting money can buy cannot really compete with the irresistibility offered by the corset: it is the thrill of the unknown, the gift to be unwrapped. Cinched and breathless in a shop fitting room on a grey Monday afternoon, even I have to concede this to be true."

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