Even as women freed themselves for a short time from the confinement of corsets, the Regency dandy, following the Prince Regent’s fashion, began to constrict himself into a wasp-waisted and broad shouldered look. For men of a certain challenged physique, firm waists and tight stomachs were achieved through laced corsets. The sculpting of wide shoulders, bulging thighs, and fine calves was accomplished by well-placed pads, as the satiric image below shows.
Lacing a Dandy, 1819
There can be no doubt, indeed, that just as the large cravat resulted from defects in the royal neck, so the stays in later years became necessary to restrain the unwieldy proportions of the royal waist, and assumed by the dandies as an act of compliment to their patron. The caricatures of the day exhibit an Illustrious Personage lifted up and struggling to insert his legs into a pair of “leather”s of a size he was anxious to appear in – which are securely lashed to the bed posts to give a sort of purchase in furtherance of his efforts – just as in 1784 stories were told of Monseigneur d’Artois, the brother of Louis XVI of France, needing the aid of four tall lacqueys to put on and off, without creasing, his small clothes of a special make and kind. – Once a Week, Volume 10
Prince Regent at his toilet, Hugh Bonneville, Beau Brummell, This Charming Man, 2008
Corsets continued to be relatively popular among the ruling and military classes for the rest of the 19th century, and retained a significant following during the first part of the 20th century.
1812 Regency a la mode
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