Whether You Need A Slip Under A Dress Never Crossed My Mind Until A Sheer One
There was a woman standing in front of me at a coffee shop last week wearing a white cotton dress, arms up, reaching for the oat milk on the top…
Nobody Mentioned I Might Need A Slip Under My Wedding Dress
My mom’s friend, a woman who got married in 1986 and has never once let anyone forget it, told me at a bridal shower that “back in our day nobody…
Nobody Agrees On Who Invented The Mini Skirt
We were four texts deep in a group chat about a wedding guest dress code when it happened. Someone sent a photo of a 1965 look, some slip of a…
Whether Viking Women Wore Corsets Turned Into A Proper Rabbit Hole
My coworker who does the Renaissance Faire circuit every October and my sister in law, who once made me watch three hours of a Viking reenactment documentary on a flight…
Medieval Women And Corsets Get Mixed Up With A Completely Different Century
I’m standing in the checkout aisle of a costume shop in October, and the woman behind me is holding two things: a “medieval princess” dress with a laced-up, boned bodice…
Mini Skirts Defined The 70s According To Everyone Except Me, Apparently
“That’s just not true, the whole decade was mini skirts,” said a guy at a dinner party last month, with the specific confidence of someone who has watched exactly one…
Crop Tops Were Everywhere In The 90s Before My Time, Apparently
I sell swimwear for a living, which means I spend half my shift talking people out of buying the exact same suit they had in a photo from three summers…
The Corset Waist Training Claim Followed Me Into A Fitting Room Again
My aunt Denise brought this up over Thanksgiving stuffing, completely unprompted, the way she does with most opinions she’s held since 1987. Back in her day, she said, girls wore…
The Corset Has A Murkier Origin Story Than I Ever Expected
I used to tell customers the corset was a Victorian torture device invented by men to make women faint decoratively into settees, and I said it with real confidence, usually…
Whether Men Like Corsets On Women Or Just Think They Should
I have personally asked eleven different men whether they like corsets on women. Eleven, over about six years, mostly at bars where I had no business bringing up boning as…