I have a running joke with myself about corset tops, which is that I buy one every single spring convinced I have finally solved the underwear question, and every single spring I have not solved it. This is not a real argument, nobody in my house is on the other side of it, but my sister has started asking “did you figure out the bra situation” the way other people ask about the weather, and that tells you everything about how reliably I fail at this.
The one I have not stopped wearing this year is a boned cotton style in a color that reads more like a faded chalkboard than black, and it earns its place because it does the thing corsets always promise and rarely deliver, which is holding its shape through an actual day rather than just through the photo. I wore it to a lunch, then straight into three hours of standing around a farmers market, and it looked the same coming home as it did leaving. That is not nothing. I have owned versions of this exact silhouette going back to somewhere around 1994, and I can tell you plainly that this one fits better than any of the earlier attempts, though the earlier attempts also involved a push up bra situation so dire I am not going to describe it here out of basic self respect.
The underwear question, since we are being honest, comes down to this: strapless if the boning is doing real work, a soft bralette if it is more of a suggestion than a structure, and absolutely nothing at all if you are under thirty and I am simply too old to be advising you on that particular decision. I tried the no bra route once this year under a linen version, in the spirit of research, and my sister took one look and said nothing, which from her is a review in itself.
The gamble in this bunch is a satin lace up style that looks fantastic on someone with the patience to actually lace it, and looks like a costume on someone who yanks it on in forty seconds the way I do most mornings. I bought it anyway.
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I do not regret it, exactly, but I would not tell a friend it was a safe choice, because it isn’t one, it rewards a kind of attention I don’t always have to give it.
Will any of this survive past the season. The cotton one, yes, easily, it has the bones of something I will still reach for in 2030. The satin one I am less sure about, it is having a moment and moments end, though I called that within about four seconds of trying it on, which might say more about how many moments I have already watched end than about this particular top.
