Ladies of a Certain Vintage

Recently, in a fit of middle-aged frustration, I bought a vintage open-bottom girdle. How vintage? Almost as old as my mother, who was born not long after the US entered the Second War. I got it because I was depressed by the fact that while my weight hasn't really changed since my daughter Bridgie was born - over 20 years ago - things are shall we say, re-arranging themselves, especially since the climacteric has begun in earnest. And alas,  my lovely Edwardian corset is creaky and does not allow me to wear knits. Hence the girdle. I looked, sceptically, at 'shapewear' in the better shops and decided it couldn't do the job, which a perusal of others' opinions on the 'net confirmed.  Spanx just can't cut it.

There are all sorts of emotions attached to this sort of contraption - wildly varying emotions, rather like the climacteric: from weepy nostalgia for my elegant mother, to a lingering hippie disgust because I never thought that I of all people would wear such a thing (and before having children never needed it as I had a stick figure), to a certain unmentionable delight in the sheer Old Hollywood seductiveness of it.

So I put it on, a feat in itself, worthy of corsetry (to which I am well-used). A few adjustments later - it was too large in the waist  - and... vavoom baby! Oh I was hooked. Hooked zipped and sunk for life. What else do you say when it looks marvelous and feels splendid? I rushed to put on a vintage 1940s knit dress. Glory Hallelujah! It was smashing.  The kind of look that makes you want to rush to put on stockings and scarlet lipstick.

What I found over the next few days of breaking it in is that I missed it when I wasn't wearing it. The hippie child who used not to wear brassieres (because I really didn't need to) had become a fully fledged  pin up girl. Eek!

I found myself thinking, Obviously, since I can't wear this with jeans (or even trousers) on the rare occasions I wear them, what do I do? Enter the search and find mission for a vintage panty girdle pattern (which I found, on Etsy, circa 1970) and a vintage pink cotton girdle - from Sears & Roebuck! - from the late 1940s.

I then searched for the heavy duty powernet to make the panty girdle (and discovered how many men were mad about them, go figure!) and in the midst of all this thought - well, while I'm at it, why don't I make some nice vintage bras too? So got an old Kwik Sew pattern on Etsy.

It has become an obsession, this vintage undies thing, and I spent the day researching and drawing exactly what I wanted, from Victorian to 70's boho. The one decade I gave a miss was the 40s as the difference between it and the 30s wasn't so great as to warrant it. Now I have several sketchbook pages of designs I like that will suit my figure, wardrobe and taste. No underwire! No elastic straps! No 'wardrobe malfunction' balconets!

In the old days a lady tended to have a signature colour for lingerie. Mine is ballet pink with ecru lace. I plan to do everything in this, in rayon, charmeuse, or batiste, as applicable. The whole show: bras, knickers, chemises,  nightgowns, peignoirs. The one thing I can't make is stockings, so Berkshire is safe.

To be beautiful and elegant in and under clothes, with comfort and modesty. That's not a bad how do you do for a moment of hormonal despair.