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II: The Scientific Support and the Rivals

The Scientific Support

These fan-lacing corsets have often been referred to as “scientific supports.” Certainly, these corsets and some of their derivatives have been used for serious orthopaedic treatments. Camp's advertising treated both the medical side of corsetry and the fashion side with equal vigour. This sort of advertising appealed to so many women who naturally wanted to look their best and yet harboured the notion (imaginary or otherwise) that there is 'something wrong with my back,' for example. For these women, the Camp corset appealed. The Camp style corset is highly effective at figure forming and very easy to put on, adjust and wear.

Camp shows images of good and bad corsetry (below). On the left here is the happy relationship between the corsetiere and her smiling customer, proud of her 'new' figure and just waiting to try on that gown she bought for a special occasion. On the right, the poor lady in question is being poked, prodded and generally 'tut tutted' at by a group of nurses and formidable matrons who seem to be using the object of their attention more as an example of the lady who "didn't listen to her Mother when she was young"!

The recurring theme of 'scientific corsetry' is repeated here. 'Engineering corsetry' would be more appropriate.

Camp advertising in the 1940's used both the positive and the negative approach. The lady on the left and below looks happy with her new foundation garment and trim figure. In marked contrast, the poor lady on the right (whose shame is hidden in the shadows) seems to be the object of disapproval by a group of formidable matrons.

Camp, as did so many other firms, sold the overall benefit of the corset to the wearer's well-being. How you disguised the webbing and straps was, however, another matter!

Even in the 1990's, the Dutch Camp fitter adjusts the webbing straps of the corset. There is no fashion statement here. The support is indeed, scientific and would be worn a briefly as possible by the patient for some 'back problem'. Note that the assistant wears vaguely medical looking garb (see the nurse above right). This aims the advertisement squarely at the 'surgical corset' end of the market.

The customer wears a leotard under her corset which will prompt readers to wonder whether women wear their foundations over or under their slips and knickers. The confusion comes from the modesty of the advertising photographs. Any foundation that requires more than a moment to release is always worn under the, let us say, 'modesty layer'. For advertising purposes this is unacceptable since the layer conceals what is being advertised.

Basko Camp, Holland 1996.

I purchased this actual corset from the corsetiere in Rijswijk, a suburb of the Hague in Holland. It must have been about 1999. The corset doesn't fit particularly well, since latter day CAMP's are notorious short in the back; exactly what a lady of my build does not need. Note how the corset is marketed under the BASKO name, but described as a 'Camp Lady's Corset', the term 'Camp' referring to the generic lacing style rather than the owning company.

The few remaining Spirella corsetiere were, perhaps professionally, scathing of CAMP. One fitter told me that she had recently 'rescued' one 'old dear' from her Camp!

Nevertheless, the practical side of the Camp lacing system was a boon to both the fashionable lady and also the lady with a medical problem. The support was effective, easy to adjust and strong. It could be made, as shown above, as attractive as required and yet it fulfilled its primary function. As the 1970's drew to a close and the corsetry sections of the great department stores began their slide into the 'sea of brassieres' (as a friend of mine commented), Camp products began to show a change in emphasis from fashion to function. The materials became plainer. The rare satins vanished and even the brocades moved to coutil or nylon. The traditional colours of white and tea rose (Camp virtually made no black underwear except for the rare example below) were replaced by boring beige, and metal suspenders became plastic. The heavy fabric webbing of the straps was replaced by a thin, shiny fabric and, as a last indignity, Velcro replaced the hooks and eyes. The fashionable garment had become a surgical appliance.

I have no idea how this affected the finances of the Camp company; however, they still exist today and thrive in the surgical appliance market. The 1996 brochure shows the descendants of the traditional Camp corset and girdle, albeit in beige and notably in Dutch. Camp must have joined forces with a company called Basko, and the names Basko, Camp, and Basko-Camp are marketed in Western Europe and Scandinavia, but no longer in Britain. The latest web catalogue reveals that the traditional fan-lacing lives on in a wrist support, but its use in proper corsetry has died some 94 years after its invention.

At one point, CAMP was famous throughout the world. America was a stronghold (right), and many Camp corsets still appear at auction there. Indeed, it is the auction houses that still provide some regular wearers with their only source of corsets! Holland and Germany featured Camp strongly for several decades after the war. The CAMP sign was a feature of Dutch corset shops in the 1960's to 1980's. One still is on display in Rijswijk.

Examples from Italy (left) show a some market penetration as well, however, the Italians, quintessentially style-conscious, had many brands of their own from the fashionable to the heroically formidable. Pasta has a lot to answer for!

The inimitable Lyn Locke wears an American Camp pantie-girdle and shows just how stunning an American women can appear!

The examples shown below come from the 1980's and are genuine Camp products. Identical products are still sold (http://www.backbraces.com/pages-products/backsupports5.html ).

These products are also available as copies in Latin America. They were marketed in the 1990's under the brand name 'Pro Infirma' and it was interesting to note that in their shops, the only catalogues that the assistants referred to were old Camp catalogues.

A formidable corset by any standard, it bears all the Camp hallmarks. The long back steels (which were usually made of Duralumin) are held to the spine by means of shoulder straps (CT).

Another strong support with triple side-lacers and a slightly dished front panel for the abdomen (CT). These are corsets from the 1970's and the durable rather than fashionable nature of the material indicates their intent precisely. I purchased an identical corset in Holland in 1986 and it featured in their brochures until recently

Maternity gave Camp's engineers a chance to excel. Triple-lacers were quite normal, and we have in our collection an amazing quadruple lacer, where the expanding mother-to-be could accommodate her swelling abdomen, provided of course that she had a degree in mechanical engineering! When you consider that Camp manufactured brassieres of a similarly adjustable nature, the poor woman concerned must have wondered ruefully about the expression 'confinement'.

The Camp maternity corset (TP). The ease of the lacers' adjustability would have been a boon to the young mother-to-be.

The Camp maternity corset (CT). The swing rear suspenders and the five hole former are hallmarks of this brand. The corset on the right has, perhaps, gone a little too far to accommodate the expanding womb. Four sets of lacing (two on each side) take up so much of the corset that it's even hard to make the photograph show all the complexity.

Possibly the most outlandish creation that we have encountered, is a girdle designed for pregnancy. It performs a sort of 'Jeckyl and Hyde' function, where the rear is confined into the 'mono-buttock' sleekness required in 1960's America, whereas the tummy is literally allowed total freedom which, I would have thought, precluded wearing the skirt encouraged by the other side of the contraption.

The Cherry-Tomatoe Collection

The 'scientific support' was advertised as such by Gale, the corsetry section of Sears. Typical of many advertising photographs of corsetry, the apparent scene below of three ladies and a reflection in a mirror is composed partly of photographs superimposed on the scene with the corsets drawn over the ladies. The reflection in the mirror purports to have come from the middle lady, but the reflection faces the wrong way!

Sears of 1958 still displayed a formidable array of corsetry aimed at an age group older than the lovely models on the right. The lady on the left might just have been about the same age as many of the women who wore these corsets.

Sears employed the non-Camp style of cluster lacing and were advertising it back in 1935, although on that occasion the corset was one of those very popular perforated latex affairs.

“Scientific support” should perhaps more correctly be called “engineering support” as a tribute to S.H. Camp, who patented the design. These corsets were worn by hundreds of thousands of women over nearly nine decades and, like the garments of so many of the successful corset companies, what was being sold in the 1990's can be traced back to the 1930's. I've compiled a collection of photographs from the various Camp brochures from 1930 to 1992 that illustrate this point.

Even Ambrose Wilson, purveyor of mail order corsets to the British masses for many decades sold fan-lacers.

I tried on a Camp (one of our collection) in 2005 and it reminded me how ridiculously simple that lacing method is. One goes from bulging abdomen to youthful flatness with a firm pull of the straps (“Lady Mary adjusted the straps of her surgical corset with a vigour that reminded Sir Godber of a race meeting” writes Tom Sharpe in his hilarious novel, Porterhouse Blue.) Would that my other lost youthful attributes were as easy to recreate! I'm not alone in these thoughts as a letter from a reader illustrates.

From the Ambrose Wilson catalogue of 1962. Fan-laced and busk-fronted, this was powerful and practical.

The 'before-and-after' picture on the right is, for once, moderately accurate. Forget the prosy text; it is the flat tummy that is accurate. Camp was not just one of the best in this regard, but one of the easiest to fasten.

Memories of the Camp Corset

Mummy and Granny wore Camps for as long as I can remember. I supposed that one day, when I became old enough I would wear one as well; it was a normal part of a ladies underwear. The cluster-lacing seemed an eminently practical way to tighten the garment. In our household they were quite unexceptional and I was surprised when a girlfriend from school remarked on "those old-fashioned torture devices" when we passed through the kitchen on washing day, corsets and bloomers hanging from the pulley in riot of tea-rose and white. It certainly gave Mummy a flat tummy which patently many of my friends mother's did not possess. As it turned out, I never did wear a corset of any kind. When I went to university, 'flower power' and 'bra burning' was in. Corsets definitely were not. I sometimes wonder, as a Granny myself these days, whether my wayward figure might have been a lot better had I not become a victim of Womens' Lib.