Five Hands · Antique Edwardian French Broderie Anglaise Corset Cover
Cotton with broderie anglaise eyelet and lace trim · five mismatched buttons · French seams throughout · Edwardian, French 1900s-1910s · 38cm strap to hem, 51cm bust buttoned · hand-restored
No two buttons on her agree with each other. One is mother-of-pearl, one a small disc of ceramic, two are covered in cloth, and the last is carved with a fluted, spoke-like pattern nobody in the archive has managed to name yet. Five hands, or five decades of mending, closing the same five holes.
Every interior seam is French seamed, the raw edge folded in and stitched twice so nothing inside her was ever left to fray, the kind of finishing a hand takes real time over. The lace panel at the bust is broderie anglaise, eyelet cut and buttonholed into hearts and drop shapes, edged in a scalloped trim that does not quite match the lace at the underarm, a small honest sign that this piece was made larger at some point from what began as a smaller garment. She belongs to a lot gathered in France in the 1980s, sitting untouched for decades before I began the slow work of bringing pieces like her back myself: soaking, whitening and restoring by hand, one at a time, my own ongoing project. The corset cover herself is Edwardian, cut and stitched decades before that. She arrived grey with age and has since been restored, by me, back to the white she was always meant to be.
She closes centre front with those five mismatched buttons, and gathers at the underbust into a fitted cuff rather than falling loose. The straps run 11cm from shoulder to garment, wide enough to sit flat rather than dig in, and the shoulders themselves remain sturdy with no strain to the seams. A rust-toned stain sits on the underbust cuff, pictured plainly rather than hidden, the one mark age left behind that restoration could not lift.
Material
Cotton, broderie anglaise eyelet lace, mother-of-pearl, ceramic, cloth-covered and carved buttons
Care
Hand wash only in cool water, as this piece already carries all the washing she should need for some time. Dry flat out of direct sun, and store folded rather than hung to protect the straps and lace.
More on looking after vintage pieces in our care guide.
Size
Measured flat: Measured flat, she runs 38cm from strap to hem, with the bodice itself measuring 30cm long. The bust measures 51cm buttoned, the underbust cuff 24cm, and the straps drop 11cm from shoulder to garment. She can fit up to a modern AU size 12, with a C to D cup at the very most. International size M.
Our size guide explains how vintage sizing is read here.
Condition
Very good. All five buttons are present and secure, the lace is fully intact with no tears, and every interior seam holds with no fraying or opening. A rust-toned stain remains on the underbust cuff, visible in the photographs and not removed in the restoration process. Mismatched lace panels and underarm piecing suggest the garment was enlarged at some point from a smaller original, which we read as history rather than flaw.
Our condition lexicon explains the grades we use.
Before it reaches you
Someone loved this before you did, and I try to honour that properly. Each piece is hand washed, or cleaned in the way that the fabric permits, then steamed until it softens and straightens and feels newly attended to. Wherever a button was missing, it has been replaced with a vintage one from my long-kept collection. Wherever a hem had given way, I fix it by hand. By the time it leaves this room it is genuinely clean, pressed, whole, and looked over one final time before I let myself believe it is ready. Not restored. Not made new. Just returned to a state where it can be loved again, by someone who was not there the first time.
Someone once outgrew the smaller version of this garment and refused to let her go, cutting her open at the seams and feeding in enough new cloth to keep her useful a while longer. The five buttons arrived from five different tins, at five different moments, whenever the mending basket happened to be closest. She spent a long time grey before anyone thought to soak her back to white. Whoever she becomes next, she has already proven she knows how to be remade.