Untying the Corset: Exploring Lady Duff Gordon as Britains first fashion icon of the 20th century!

Lady Duff Gordon in the garden (Alt Text: A young Lady Duff Gordon, dressed in a whitish, beige dress in a garden . She is standing next to a white bird cage suspended from a tree branch that comes up to her chest.)

To start this series of blogs off, we are travelling back to the start of the 20th century and focusing on Lady Duff Gordon (1863-1935). Who was a fashion designer known internationally but left her mark on British fashion. Lady Duff Gordon was also known to be one of the most well-known surviors of the Titanic.

‘Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, better known as “Lucile”, became the foremost couturier of her day…With her innovative eye for flattering, uncorested styles and love for sweet-pea and hydrangea colours, Lucy elevated the lowly occupation of dress designer to new social heights’.

Lucile's impact on fashion stretched globally, she became famous for her plunging necklines with slit skirts and her lingerie. Lucile is also known for popularising tea gowns. She used pastel colours alongside more free-flowing fabrics such as silk and chiffon to create a more graceful and ‘airy’ silhouette, seen in her tea gown designs. However, some argue that her impact on fashion is actually minor. Jane Ace argues that her impact was limited as she only designed for ‘the upper-class echelons of international society’, thus arguing that her impact only affected a select few, rather than changing the fashion industry as a whole.

The ‘tea-gown’ which was popularised by Lucile was arguably her biggest contribution to British fashion, which Lucile ‘loved to create’. Tea-gowns were typically made from light fabric which Lucile loved such as silk, and were seen in light, pastel colours. They were a comfortable garment that women wore, mainly belonging to the upper class, they were lose fitting and worn without a corset. In images that I have examined they seemed to still give a sinched waist but this was achieved without a corset. The majority of tea-gowns that I have examined either had loose fitting sleeves or no sleeves at all. Tea-gowns also were decorated with elegant lace or embroidery. These garments broke away from conservatism and the traditional way of dressing, they still portrayed a feminine look from the light and airy fabric which Lucile used. Women who wore tea-gowns experienced this liberating feminie airy feeling.

Victorian Fashion Plate 1889 (Alt Text: Two women standing side by side, woman on the left is wearing a dress in a deep blue colour with a straight cut bodice whilst wearing a hat decorated with feathers. The woman on the right is wearing a plaid dress, with a coat boddice in the same material but revealing a plain piece of fabric whilst also wearing a hat with feathers.)

Edwardian Fashion Plate 1913 (Alt Text: Two women standing side by side. Woman on the left wearing a shapeless dress in a soft material in a light blue colour with a semi-sweetheard neckline, She also has a sheer fabric drapped behind her with a headband consistinf of a extravagant feather. The woman on the right has a similar dress on but with a plunging neckline wearing pearls in a yellow toned green colour and lace cascading down on both sides of the dress.)

The two images you can see side by side are fashion plates with the left being a fashion plate from the 1889 and the right from 1913 it is evident that there is a drastic change in fashion and shows the massive impact Lucile had on fashion with these fashion plates only being 24 years apart. In the Victorian fashion plate, we can see that there is a small waist made possible by tight and restrictive corset which was a staple in all middle and upper class women’s wardrobes. This was emphasised by having a larger bum, achievable with a bum roll or a hoop skirt that went further out when worn. All skin is covered, in a tight material such as cotton or wool which were popular during the Victorian period, and only revealing the face. Dresses were more commonly seen in darker colours, to give a more sophisticated look. This is a huge contrast to the fashion plate from 1913. Where the two women are seen sporting tea-gowns. Dresses were more shapeless, by removing the restricting corset and hoop skirts, a common element in Lucile’s work. With the material of dresses now made out of silk or chiffon it allowed the dress to be more fluid thus giving an airy look to the garment and to the woman wearing it. The garment has a deepened neckline, with either a plunging or semi-sweetheart neckline, revealing the chest and also the arms are on show. We see outfit colours shift away from dark and depressing and into more pastel, paired with delicate embroidery seen on the garment worn by the woman standing on the right.

Lucile’s work caused controversy amongst many. Her fashion moved away from conventional, traditional fashion standards and embraced women’s liberation. I would argue that Lucile paved the way for the flapper look that we see in the 1920s. It seems that the most controversial aspect of Lucile’s work was steering away from corset wearing. Corsets up until this point were widely used by upper-class women for centuries, therefore Lucile’s choice to break away from them emphasises how Lucile’s work broke away from traditional fashion. Modern historians see the corset as a sign of oppression. Valerie Steele author of ‘The Corset: a cultural history’ dubs this element of clothing as ‘an instrument of torture’, leading her on to argue that ‘corsetry functioned as a coercive apparatus through which patriarchal society-controlled women and exploited their sexuality’. In her own work Lucile refers to her breaking away from the corset she states, ‘I brought in the brassiere in opposition to the hideous corset…’. The decline in corsets can be seen is apparent in various editions of ‘Vogue’ magazine where one edition from August 1917, states that ‘woman decided to support herself…A mistake a grave mistake…’. Arguably, this highlights Lucile’s impact on public fashion and the controversy that surrounded it.

Overall, Lady Duff Gordon did impact fashion. We can see a drastic change in fashion in a small time-frame, which was in the style of Lucile’s work, therefore it is fair to give her credit where credit is due and say she contributed to this shift in fashion. This new fashion was more liberating than what fashion was like previously, this is where Lucile had the impact as she created fashion focusing on how it looks but also how it felt. I would argue that Lucile gave women a sense of fashion liberation.