Corsets trivia
Corsets Mini Quiz
Test your knowledge with these top questions!
Sometimes carved with romantic messages, what rigid, flat strip is inserted into the front center of a corset?
In 18th-century Europe, busks were sometimes engraved with romantic messages or love tokens by suitors and gifted to women for insertion into their corsets.
To save enough material for two battleships in 1917, the U.S. asked women to stop buying corsets made of what metal?
In 1917, the U.S. government urged women to abandon steel-boned corsets, freeing up 28 tons of steel—enough to construct the hulls of two battleships for World War I.
Often called "whalebone," Victorian corset panels were made of what keratinous material found in a whale's mouth?
Baleen consists of keratinous plates that hang from the upper jaws of baleen whales, enabling filter-feeding on krill and small fish.
Derived from the French word for "support," what was the standard term for a corset during the 17th and 18th centuries?
The term "stays" comes from the French "estayer," meaning to support or prop up, referring to the rigid boning that stiffened corsets in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Subject to fierce medical debate in the 19th century, what term describes using a corset to drastically reduce waist size?
Tightlacing, popular among Victorian women, aimed to cinch waists to 16-18 inches, prompting 19th-century doctors to warn of risks like compressed lungs and displaced organs.