Hickory week

 

Advertisements last century made much of the importance of buying your girdle from a trained fitter. Department stores often advertised "Two trained fitters always on duty in our corsetry salon", or "Madame Vinegar, the expert fitter from Hickory, will be ready to fit you in our Corsetry Salon this week". The caption to this Berlei ad read "Fit your Berlei before your frock."

"Fit your Berlei before your frock"

 

But for many girls this was anything but a happy experience.

Certainly some girls (especially in the States) considered that their first girdle was an important milestone on their way to adulthood, and they looked forward to their first fitting, but for many it was a rude shock when their mothers announced "It's time you got a girdle", and marched them off to their mothers corsetiere. This lady would point out all her figure faults to her mother, then produce some industrial strength garment which her mother would buy, without either of them bothering to consult her at all.

Another Berlei ad, in 1954, enthused:

It makes such a difference when you have your Berlei fitted by an expert. Trained fitting can tell which foundations are best for your figure, and those are the only one she'll show you. Then, when you've chosen, she'll check every detail, so that your Berlei will always be as comfortable as it was in the fitting room.

Many of the corset salons were presided over by a dragon who had never heard of the slogan "The customer is always right", and they would do their best to bulldoze the customers into buying much firmer -- and more expensive -- girdles than they had intended. Everything was stored out of sight in drawers, so the customers were at a serious disadvantage, and unless they were very determined they would end up buying what they were told.

I said something about this to my wife recently, and she replied "It was so humiliating; you stood there, more or less naked, and they would tell you all you figure faults, then produce the garment they thought you needed". She detests OBGs, and refuses to wear them, and I strongly suspect that this aversion is the direct result of her humiliation at the hands of the corsetieres.

Katie and Ivyleaf both have examples of actual corsetry salons from the fifties on their web sites.

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