Article on 17th century stays

Last year I wrote two articles on 17th century beauty for Your Wardrobe Unlock'd and now I have written a new one for Foundations Revealed. The subject is 17th century stays, a woefully neglected subject. The article focus on extant stays and boned bodices and if any conclusions on construction can be drawn from this rather scant pool of garments.

If you subscribe to Foundations Revealed, you can read the article here.

I hope you will enjoy it! I didn't know how little that was written about this subject until I tried to read up on it, so I really hope I managed to make it interesting!

Now I just need to transform what I have learned into a pair of stays of my own!

A Young Woman at Her Toilet with a Maid by Gerard ter Boch, 1650-51, Metropolitan Museum