Did surfer girls really ride the waves at Bondi Beach in their Berlei girdles? The ad-men would have us think so.
Steve tells how the good old days really were in the land Down Under, and recounts a recent encounter that would delight the heart of any girdle fancier.
Part One: Yesterday
Catholic girls were nice girls in 1969. Nice girls wore nice things, nice shoes, nice dresses, nice hairdos - and nice underthings, which meant nice girdles. No doubt mother had much to do with daughter's choice of underclothing, being herself usually much girdled and earnest in her intention that her daughters do the same. But, mother's best intentions aside, good Catholic girls knew, at least when I was young, that a girdle was the order of the day.
Now the two good Catholic girls I'm thinking of were Jane and Julia, nice girls who lived a couple of doors down from the quiet, middle class street in which I lived as a child. I was friends with their little brother, and with him as an excuse, I came to know his sisters better than he ever suspected.
Jane was the black-haired beauty of the family, taking after her mother who, I gathered later, had been something of a sensation around Blitz Britain. I've seen photos of Jane's mum - a '40's beauty, Victory-wave blonde, vivacious, the centre of men's attention. Jane took after her, but thinner, taller, more lithe and more acidic. Jane had a tongue on her, which her plainer sister Julia did not. I liked both of them, but poor old Julia felt somewhat in her sister's shadow. Her demeanor showed this as much as her choice of clothes. Being 1969, Jane had ventured into the world of the mini-skirt whilst Julia remained in fashion twilight and held onto less revealing clothing. However, and this is the point of my reverie, they both went to the same school and therefore wore the same school uniform.
And under their school uniform, they both wore girdles.
But different girdles.
Jane, the thin, tall, sassy one, wore a colored lace panty girdle with suspenders. I remember the suspenders in particular because one night I was at their place and she walked in, mini-skirt and stockings and whatever, to say goodnight as she went out on a date and her father, a British Army fossil of the variety only recognizable in films of the '30's, made some inane joke about her being in her "stocking feet". Ha ha. Profound hilarity. Anyway, the observation was also a truth. Conservative girls such as these had yet to move on to panty-hose, and, in this household at least, gartered stockings were still the only way of dressing. A girdle, therefore, was the most practical ( and I'm sure this was the way in which it was envisioned) manner in which to fasten stockings. Tried and true, stockings and girdles were what made a modest young girl of the day and this is how Jane dressed.
As for Julia....Well, here her mother had different ideas. Julia was stockier than Jane and her figure was selected for great scrutiny by her mother. Jane could wear a paper bag and look good, but Julia needed extra attention which, zippered and boned, she got.
Jane looked great. But it is Julia I remember the most.
Now here's a funny memory - let's see if anyone else experienced this - girdle-wearing women of the late '60's seemed to not care who saw their underthings, and deposited them everywhere around the house. Several older women, I remembered, left girdles in the shower, at the doors of bedrooms, behind couches, wherever they were standing when they decided to remove these underpinnings. For a small boy like me ( a girdle fancier since birth I believe) this was a kind of accidental heaven. I remember incident after incident of finding such apparel thrown around the houses of even the most house-proud and neatness-smitten women. Girdles, corsolettes, long line bras and any other combination of such pretties were flung to the winds and never retrieved, found by me of course who had long since learned to look for them. Julia, not Jane, was one of these.
Under her gingham school uniform she wore a sturdy Berlei 18 Hour hi-waist girdle, a masterful piece of work in nylon and powernet. I particularly admired the non-stretch front panels which descended to just above the gusset because, and this is the sort of thing a girdle fancier thinks, such panels did not stretch. I found this erotic in the extreme. That and the shortish legs in this type of garment, erotic for the reason that being short they had also to be tight in order to do their work and still stay in place. To this day I find the Berlei to be a superior girdle, if a little sharp, because of it's uncompromising, even unfeminine nature. Unfeminine? Many girdles were soft and sleek, feminine in the clichéd manner, but the Berlei was "no nonsense" control, hard to the touch, even difficult to wear and so any woman who wore such a garment, showed fortitude, purpose, and a serious attitude toward not only their appearance but also toward their lives as well. Julia was like this and she held my attention.
Julia too used to leave her underthings strewn about the house, a habit for which I am grateful eternally. Home from school, after a day spent in her Berlei, she would disrobe and cast her underwear wherever she felt., the bathroom, the corridor, bedroom, etc. She did this in front of me one day, oblivious to the little boy standing not far behind her. As she walked, off came the school tunic, the shoes, her watch and then, stockings and all, her girdle and bra. Strange this, considering how conservative the household was but I suspect it was a kind of rebellion against her girdled mother. Anyway, I don't remember Julia ever wearing a longline bra (wish) but girdled she always was. She would take off the heavy-duty day school girdle, wait till she got her breath, and then girdle again for dinner. This transformation was an acute source of pleasure for me and I tried to be around their house at mealtime for this show as much as I could without my real motive being discovered.
No doubt her parents thought me in some sort of early adolescent puppy-love and in a sort of a way I suppose I was. I liked her, I also liked her dedication to corsetry. I was infatuated, but not in the ordinary sense. There was a style to her conservative corseting and a style also to her rebellion. I liked both. I liked, I think most, her putting on and taking off and then putting on again of such corsetry. Hers was an interesting obsession, akin, I felt, to mine.
One day she left her bedroom shortly after coming home from school. I found an excuse (something about a missing toy) to search the room inhabited by both sisters. You know, to this day I remember the mood of that room, cool, perfumed, the walls a little bare, the floor a little messy, definitely female, clutter here, clutter there. Only a foot from the door was her Berlei, discarded in favour of something else. My eyes drank this in. To touch, it was still warm. I so much wanted to take it, I am amazed that I found the courage not to. I took the memory instead.
Now, ladies reading this, take note. In the mind of a girdle fancier there is a constant threnody, a mixt jingling of bells that thrills on the one side for the woman and on the other for her sense of fashion. Julia the woman and her ghost (her clothes) were indissoluble. To some extent, jewelry is like this also - it is part of a conscious "image", which can be put on when show is called for and discarded in moments of informality. Thus her Berlei was not only the holiest of holies, but was more "her" than she was. Crazy, heh? Even when I was eleven I was crazy...
She grew up and so did I. When last heard of she was working as an air-traffic controller. A sit-down job just as school is, I wonder if even now she is working late at some airport, dressed in the uniform of her job and still wearing beneath it, the firm-control she wore as a girl...
Part Two: Today
Picture this: Australia, New year, the bush, blazing heat, four thousand hippies at a festival in the middle of nowhere camped along the marshy iselets of the River Murray. The heat shimmers, the air shrills to cicadas, everywhere stroll couples, old, young, intermediate, skins either doused in sunscreen or wrapped beneath rainbow colored muslin.
This is Confest '97, a festival that has run some twenty five years or so and which I have attended some 15. Typically, nudity is the order of the day, so here is the last place one would expect the gladdening appearance of foundations, but the younger generation of "ferals" take fashion seriously and from whatever source, be it from the Indus valley, '60's kitsch from the op-shop, mum's cast-offs or things cobbled together from all of the above. So, when I mount the brow of a sandy hill and find the sight of a wonderfully attractive half-Chinese girl wrapped head to toe in full bra and corsolette, imagine the surprise.
I had seen this girl around Melbourne a few times before. Not too many women look like this girl, a wide grin that warms the heart, a head of tousled, wild black hair that bounces to her walk, wide shoulders that have bronzed in the sun, a little Indian style ring in the left nostril, kohl worn to accentuate her already almond eyes and, being half Celt, a few cute freckles round the cheekbones.
And being the fashion addict that she is, I had noticed her as much for her clothing as her appearance round the Melbourne club scene. Other times I have seen her in leopard-print leggings, vinyl mini-skirts, chunky chain belts, high heeled black boots.... you name it. I've even seen her once in an all white vinyl outfit wearing a puff-ball white wig.
I've noticed her enough to recognize her from behind.
And it was this silhouette that took my fancy that day as I topped the hill. Not only did I notice the outfit she was wearing but knew immediately that I had seen her before.
She turned, put her hand up against the glare of the sun, and waved to someone behind me.
As she did so, I became aware of her outline, an outline which at first I had thought was a dark brown sleeveless top but which, when she arched back, showed itself to be a full body suit of the boned, zipped '50's variety. This was indeed a formidable piece of corseting, comprising several cross layers of material and wide straps to support the considerable work given by the manufacturers to the bosom. This last was a round shell of gleaming light brown satin, trimmed all about with scalloped stitching. At the front, a cascade of elegant decoration moved down from cleavage to belly, fanning out in a glorious piece of the corsetiere's art - a triple, perhaps quadruple panel made up of cross-layers of differing materials, divided by a strong zip and beneath it, the ripple of eyelets that betrays the hooked closures beneath.
This was a sturdy work of art, this corsolette, requiring resolve in the wearer. And it was tight, very tight, as betrayed by her silhouette which had that wonderful, elongated bell shape which only a good foundation can give. Her hips were nipped in, her belly flat like Tina Louise (Ginger) in Gilligan's Island, her breasts saluted the sky. I imagined being her hands as she stroked the garment on, imagined how the garment felt holding her like a cupped hand holds milk. I was stopped in my tracks as if hit by a bullet, and all I could do was smile.
As you can tell from my writing, this type of garment is my preferred upon the form of woman, and she wore this startling device with the grace and fine-boned decorum its designers had hardly dared to dreamed of. As she waved, her bosom heaved, something visible even beneath the heavy sheathing of the brassiere, so fully covering as to allow no actual sight of the wonderful treasures beneath. Her dark eyes flashed, her white teeth gleamed. No camera, dammit, but the memory will do.
Because of the heat, the hot sand, the uneven ground, she wore no shoes but went brown and barefoot through the shimmer of the day. The ingenious part of her costume, then, was keeping it in place without recourse to suspenders and stockings. What she had done ( and who knows, maybe this is a fashion adaptation for women of the future) was to stitch to the bottom of her corsolette a web of muslin and nylon, rather like a heavier version of the ballerina's tutu. This swathed her hips and depended to just below the knees, a kind of '90's feral version of the '50's wide skirt. This, together with the little glittering pieces of jewelry she wore, made an image both indelible and worth sharing.
The whole outfit had once been utilitarian white ( I often imagine her dressed in the same though in its original color). Had dyed, the various types of material that made up the garment responded by coloring differently, the satin remaining pale while the powernet turned chocolate brown. Altogether, a stroke of fashion genius, I thought. I've seen nothing like it from any paltry fashion designer. This, I thought, was her own special creation... until I saw her friends.
Now the next thing about this girl was the friendship circle in which she moved. Her friends were just like her and just as inventive. Imagine say six or seven of these nymphs, likewise with tousled hair and sun burnished skin, each with their own personal slant on this fashion. Long line bras worn with Indian wraps caught about the neck, fish-net stocking and suspenders peeking out from ragged cut-off jeans and worn shoeless in the dust. This group were a world unto themselves, and kept tight-knit, with little male company in sight.
Confest lasts about eight days over New Year. During those days I had opportunity to see much of these corseted wild things. If they had ever thought of the girdle as "old fashioned" they had never rejected it, but with whimsy, added it to their eclectic taste.
Actually, the scene somewhat reminded me of the more absurd girdle adverts of the late '60's, girls in girdles at the Pyramids etc. But here they were and for real. Best of all, they wore their corsolettes and long-lines the whole eight days of the festival, washing them at evening in the cool, slow river. I never actually saw them wading into the river so dressed, but I know this is what they did, washing the garments while still on.
Why? Because, even at dusk, the air is hot and clothes dry in minutes out of the water.
I wonder if this idea gives rise to a whole new species of the wet T-shirt idea? The wet girdle contest...
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Originally Posted September 3, 2001