Corset-Story Blog

...aka 'The Life And Times of Tura Satana'
The Motion Picture Production Code – also known as the Hays Code – was the code of censorship applied to all US movies from 1930 until 1968. During that time, it was virtually impossible for any motion picture on general release to depict graphic sexuality or violence. Some [...]

These days, the only time you’re ever likely to see – let alone wear – a crinoline is on your wedding day, or at a (very) formal event like a ball. We don’t know about you, but we don’t get invited to that many balls. Back in the 19th Century, however, crinolines were all the [...]

2005 saw the release of a film which, along with the careers of contemporary artists like Dita Von Teese and Dirty Martini, was part of a dramtic resurgence of interest in the world of burlesque. Directed by Mary Harron (director of ‘I Shot Andy Warhol’ and ‘American Psycho’), ‘The Notorious Bettie Page’ told the story [...]

Sassy and Suggestive
Picture a 1960s striptease or burlesque performance, and there’s every chance you have one particular piece of music in mind. It’s a big, jazzy number featuring a sassy trombone and suggestive bass drum, and it’s so familiar that just the sound of it has become musical shorthand for striptease. It is, of course [...]

Over the last couple of months, certain members of staff have been getting into the wonderful world of Roller Derby. We're yet to see them actually make it into a formal bout, but we have been impressed by roller derby fashion- while there aren't always uniforms as such, there is no doubt that a certain [...]

After a few decades in the wilderness, burlesque (or neo burlesque, if you prefer) made an enormous comeback in the late Nineties and early Noughties, with performers such as Dita Von Teese becoming household names – at least among the grownups – and burlesque revues enjoying a revival in places such as Las Vegas.
Burlesque has [...]

Her act was famous across the United States and, between 1908 and 1918, she was one of the highest earning entertainers in the country, but few these days remember Eva Tanguay as well as her fellow vaudevillians, Fanny Brice and Mae West.
A contemporary critic, writing in the Toledo Blade, said that she “sang in a [...]

2012 saw the release of the very long-awaited movie version of the musical Les Misérables, starring Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway and Russell Crowe. For over 32 years the stage show has been wowing audiences and gathering fans around the world, and its songs have been translated into 21 languages.
But the story of Les Miz (as [...]

Since 2006 the city of Las Vegas, Nevada has been home to both the Miss Exotic World Pageant, one of the burlesque world’s biggest conventions, and the Burlesque Hall of Fame, but the relationship between Vegas and burlesque goes back a lot further.
From Backwater to “Sin City”
Spanish settlers arrived in the Las Vegas Valley in [...]

The late Victorian and Edwardian eras signalled enormous changes in the fashion industry, on both sides of the Atlantic. Shopping habits, and the availability of a wider variety of fabrics and materials gave women a greater degree of choice than they had enjoyed only a few decades earlier.
For anyone but the very upper classes, early [...]