How to put a corset on. And take it off again.
I’m going to start at the end here, but it really is that important.
WHEN TAKING YOUR CORSET OFF, ALWAYS UNDO THE CORSET
LACING AND LET THE TENSION OUT OF THE SYSTEM BEFORE TRYING TO UNDO THE
BUSK.
If you don’t, all that pressure gets put into one of the
tiny pegs on the busk and it will snap under the pressure. Don’t wreck
your corset for the sake of not bothering to undo it properly.
So, back to putting your corset on, step by step, don't touch the lacing yet, pop the corset round you and do the busk up. This bit is not easy as the top and bottom edges of the corset will be baggy and slopping about.
Then once the busk is done up, get the corset at the right place on your waist and start pulling in the back lacing. It really helps if you can have a friend help you with this first lacing, but it’s possible to do on your own. At first it will seem as though the corset is all over the place, but as soon as you start pulling in the cords it will suddenly transform into the shape you are expecting.
Start by pulling the two big butterfly loops to tighten your corset up. The top loop controls the bottom of the corset – they are crossed like this in the middle to stop a gap forming between top and bottom. Tighten the corset slowly, adjusting and freeing up some of the criss-cross lacing to get your corset to cinch up perfectly, but don’t be scared to really pull. After a good 5 minutes of faffing around, hey presto, suddenly you'll be in there with a really comfy corset and a great hourglass shape!
When you have got it right, double up both ends and tie together like a big bow on a present. Now tuck the ends under the bottom of the corset and into the lacing to keep them out of the way. Don’t be tempted to tie the laces around your waist – this just breaks the fabric of the corset all along the waistline.
How Lux corsets are laced.
There are two ways to lace a corset, shoe lacing and butterfly lacing. At Lux we use the butterfly lace method to make sure that all our corsets can close completely – not everyone needs a back gap.
In both methods the lacing is threaded through the eyelets in a criss-cross pattern, but here’s the difference, in shoe lacing the lace goes up (or down) through all eyelets, in butterfly lacing the lace goes up through one eyelet and down through the next.
Butterfly lacing. Butterfly lacing has loops at the waist to tighten the tension and tie off, and the laces pass from the inside to outside of the corset only through the eyelets. This means that the corset can be closed completely across the back. An additional bonus is that butterfly lacing will stay the tightest at the point you tie the knot, so if you are wearing your corset for waist reduction it is to your advantage that the knot is at your waist.
Shoe lacing.
The problem with shoe lacing is that the laces pass between the two sides of the corset through the eyelets AND through the back gap as they go from top to bottom, which means the corset can’t be tightened until the sides close as the cross over in the lacing gets in the way.