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Children 1877. The girls are wearing Princess Polonaises.

Cunnington English Costume P126

 

Childs stayband ~1880

Symington Collection, Leicestershire Museum

For most of Western recorded history children have been regarded, not as a separate group, but as small adults. Babies were generally dressed in a type of girls dress, regardless of gender, but as soon as they became mobile they wore miniature versions of adult clothes. It was widely thought that their bodies needed support to grow properly, and toddlers generally wore some form of stayband, or waist, for the first few years. Boys were generally let off after this, though there are unsubstantiated reports of their being required to wear corsets at English boarding school, at least up to the 1940's, but as girls developed they wore waists which were progressively firmer and more shaped, until eventually they were wearing adult corsets.

In the picture at the right the girls are wearing miniature versions of the clothes their mother wore, and the older girl is almost certainly wearing a firm stayband.

During the last part of the 19th century various health movements began to question the desirability of the corset, and the stayband began to lose popularity. Special clothes for children also started to appear about this time. In 1908 the R & WH Symington Corset Company of Market Harborough, UK, developed a much softer and less uncomfortable version of the stayband, which they called the Liberty Bodice. This became extremely popular, at least in Britain, and quickly replaced the older garments.

In the 19th century, and until the 39-45 war in some families, the motto was 'children should be seen and not heard'. Nor were they expected to argue, especially about their clothing. But after the war children started to become much more assertive, and to have much more spending money. Manufacturers soon realised that teenagers were now significant consumers in their own right, and produced a host of goods designed to mop up their money. The corsetry manufacturers wanted their share, and produced ranges of teenage, and even preteen, foundations. These were lighter and prettier than the adult garments and were promoted by every possible means of advertising.

There are few records of what girls thought about their foundation garments prior to this, but by the fifties, at least in United States, many girls regarded the acquisition of their first girdle as an important milestone on the road to maturity, and we have a number of accounts of how some eagerly looked forward to this important event.

Girdles remained popular until the late 1960s, when the the Women's Lib movement began to campaign against them, miniskirts rendered them impractical, and pantyhose rendered them unnecessary. After a brief period of bra burning women went back to their bras, but girdles and their replacements largely disappeared from the fashion scene.

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