Waist Not ― The Migration of the Waist, 1800-1960

Fashion's waist is variable. Seldom does fashion confirm the natural waist. The fashion waist not only shifts from the peak of the ilium to the lowest section of the rib cage; it migrates even farther. The fashion waist has been known to meander nearly to the bust and has dropped, especially in the center front, to below the hips, and even to the pelvis. Canted waists can move from under the shoulderblades or the small of the back to deep descent in the front. As the waist is shaped, especially with corsets, other proportions of the body are affected.

The 1870s high waist might have suggested a particular body type, but fashion permitted its emulation by other types of women. Fashion can suppress some physical traits and emphasize others. In fact, the history of fashion demonstrates a continual, if varied, desire to project an ideal of beauty attainable through fashion's modification and artifice's emendations. In the measure to which fashion advocates and projects any idea, idealism of the waist is central. Fashion's manipulations of the waist have proffered many illusions and modifications to create personal silhouettes in semblance of the culturally desired self-projected body. If anything, contemporary fashion has assimilated fashion history's tour de force techniques of managing illusions of the waist and of simulating predominant proportions. [This book was originally published in 1994 and has gone out of print. This edition is a print-on-demand version of the original book.]