MY NAME IS DONOVAN LAUX AND I AM ADDICTED TO CORSETRY!!!!!

It is plain and simple really, I am addicted. Infatuated. Obsessed. Enamored. Whatever you want to call it, I am in deep.

My addiction began innocently. Always intrigued by fashion history, the concept of a corset came up in every source I scoured. No matter the era, the corset was mentioned. Whether they were wearing them or making the statement of not wearing them, they were a constant - a constant that I needed to know more about.

I researched, I read, I listened, I took notes and annotations and sketches and yet it was never enough. I could not possibly get close enough through secondhand sources. I had to go through the process myself, I had to create a “corset” of my own. I use quotations when I say “corset” because this “corset” was not a corset but rather an untrained investigation into what could potentially become a corset. Some elements were that of a corset and some were far off, but I was on the way and that is what mattered.

It was time to take the next step, my school offered a class - The Shaping of the Female Form - taught by an instructor I had long since admired. I signed up. The first day we watched a film called Undressed: A Brief History of Underwear, I knew I had found my people. My mind raced with ideas. I could not wait until the next class. I was itching to make a corset of my own - the historical techniques, the traditional finishes, the attention to detail. Not to be dramatic but I was truly sick with excitement.

The following weeks I went through the process of creating my first Victorian style corset. I followed the instructions, agonized over every detail, and asked hundreds if not thousands of questions. Soon enough my piece was done. I had never been so proud, so excited, so one with my craft. The candle that had burned inside me for so long had erupted into a full scale bonfire. I was ready to experiment with the next iteration.

Visions of a velvet corset with straps and a garter belt style hem danced around my head. Perhaps I was biting off a bit more than I could chew at the time and perhaps the success of my first corset gave me a false sense of confidence. I had never even worked with velvet ( a notoriously more difficult fabric) but nevertheless... In the end this thing was, to put it kindly, a disaster. Learn from the mistakes, get back up and hit the studio with even more gusto than the last time. I was closer to my dream than I had ever been, and I knew I had to keep pushing.

… And push I did. I pushed so hard that I took the class again and again. I pushed so hard that I created a corset with cups, and a corset with more than 20 panels, and explored variations and directions and rulebreaking (and often made up) techniques of exaggerating and modifying the silhouette. I pushed myself to create a corset from an authentic 1840s pattern, down to the accurate fabric, the correct finishings, the steel boning (which will need its own love letter), every last bitter detail. I explored and experimented. I tried and tried again and reworked and redraped and refinished and seam ripped and machine sewed and hand sewed and fit tested. I went back to the reference books, I touched original corsets from the 1800s, I measured, I photographed, I obsessed over the finest most minute detail. I became so obsessive that I even created an entire collection that parsed out the details of a corset as individual designs and structural studies for stand alone garments - but again, a story for another time.

All of this and I only continue to fall deeper and deeper in love with the craftsmanship and the structure and the attention to finishings. The architectural shaping combined with the softest finishes, the play off the human form, the cinching, the tightlacing, the definition, the true art that is the construction of a corset. The ability to take a one dimensional fabric and transform it into an exact map of the three dimensional human form - and that is only the starting place. This is all only the beginning- the foundations, the rules, the methods - all waiting to be reimagined. Reimagined by me, Donovan Jordan Laux, a self diagnosed corset addict with an undying drive to share my passion. I feel that I have an obligation to show the modern world what a REAL corset is and I will not stop until I have done as much and more.

Join my world of corsetry & unlock your inner addiction XX