Corset maker
A corset maker was originally a tailor who specialized in making corsets . The history of this craft is inevitably closely linked to the history of this garment.
It is possible that corset-like items of laundry existed in ancient times, but nothing is known about their production. The "modern" corset appeared in France around 1100, at the time of the French King Louis VI. It didn't come into fashion in Germany until the 15th century. At that time all corsets were made to measure by tailors, exclusively for the nobility. From 1675 onwards, seamstresses were allowed to manufacture these garments in France.
After the French Revolution , there were no longer any dress codes , so that the rest of the population could now adopt the fashion of the nobility. In 1818 Robert Werly introduced the factory production of corsets from woven fabric in Bar-le-Duc in Champagne . In 1838 a Frenchman opened the first German corset factory in Stuttgart ; In 1849 a second followed, which mainly worked for export. While the women of the upper class still hired a tailor, the bourgeois women bought the corset “ off the peg ”; the women of the lower classes had to sew their own bodices .
Around 1860 there were around 3800 corset makers working in Paris , around 10,000 people were employed in this branch around London . In the period between 1850 and 1920 the centers of the German corset industry were in Württemberg and Saxony as well as in the cities of Berlin , Cologne and Mannheim . In the beginning, the factories in Württemberg concentrated on the production of woven corsets. The main focus of the Saxon factories was on the production of the sewn corsets. This form of production later prevailed. A company based in Württemberg exported around 630,000 corsets to the USA around 1880; only after 1890 did their own manufacturers exist there. After 1918, with the end of the classic corset, production was switched to bodices.
In 1950 there were still around 120 corset-making companies in Germany (East and West). a. in Stuttgart , Berlin, Cologne and Chemnitz , including only 25 large companies.