Corsets are becoming more and more popular in the bdsm community every year, but information on them lags far behind. This book, while intended to fill that gap will confuse as much as it enlightens. Most of the text is culled from articles and stories that appeared in London Life Magazine, a publication that catered to corset fetishists in the 1920s and 1930s, and has not been modernized. The book's useful advice is buried among suggestions that range from the useless to the dangerous. The stories, which all feature women with impossibly small waists desperately trying to make them even smaller, are a lot of fun. If you like the London Life stories, Versatile Fashions has issued 4 more volumes of them. 

While entertaining at times, this book needed much more work and at least a semblance of editorial focus. Was it meant to arouse, amuse, or merely confuse? There is a real need for a good book on this subject. This one is not it. For good information on waist training, the first few issues of Body Play Magazine are still the best source, but they are rather short and leave a lot unsaid. 

Beatrice Fontanel, Support and Seduction : A History of Corsets and Bras
(Abrams, 1997), hardcover, 159 pages, $39.95, (Trans. by Willard Wood)

A delightful, though rather expensive, illustrated book showing the history of the corset and other foundation garments. In addition to the drawings and photographs of undergarments (roughly 200), it includes numerous anecdotes and amusing drawings. 

An excellent history of corsetry and fashion is David Kunzle's Fashion and Fetishism : A Social History of the Corset, Tight-Lacing and Other Forms of Body Sculpture in the West, but it is long out of print. A good library should have it though. 
 

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Giles Neret, 1000 Dessous: A History of Lingerie
(Taschen, 1998), papeback, 767 pages, $29.99

In drawings and photographs (black & white and color) this book traces the history of lingerie from a 5000 year old pair of Sumerian briefs to present-day high fashion and fetish undergarments. Most of the book is on the last few centuries, of course. As always with Tashen books, the photography is excellent, though the historical commentary is also fairly good.

If you're just interested in the twentieth century, you might want to look at A Century of Lingerie which offers a nice photographic overview of the changes of the past century. There's even a book for the lingerie challenged. The Handbook of Lingerie: A Man's Guide to Choosing Lingerie for the Woman in His Life will tell you everything you need to know to shop for the more conventional sorts fo things.

William A. Rossi, The Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe
(Krieger, Reprint, 1993), Hardcover, $32.50 

Rossi, a podiatrist and the author of the Complete Footware Dictionary, is clearly in love with his subject. This is a reprint of his book that originally appeared in the 1970s. It is a fun and easy read, filled with anecdotes about shoes, feet, and their enduring eroticism throughout history. It remains the only book-length study on the subject and is practically a must for the serious shoe fetishist.

If you're interested in a fictional account of a shoe fetishist,you might want to look at British satyrist Geoff Nicholson's Footsucker which tells the story of a man obsessed with beautiful feet who finds his dream woman.

Steele is a British cultural historian who specializes in fashion and has written previously on corseting. This book is a rather slap-dash treatment of modern fetishism and its influence on the fashion industry with chapters on corsets, boots, high heels, leather, and lingerie. Her Freudian perspective and assumption that all fetishists are male will likely offend many. Her use of sources is sketchy. She completely ignores John Willie, Bizarre Magazine, the entire Bettie Page phenomenon, and a host of other imortant people and events. Still, if youíre interested in examining the relationship between the mainstream fashion industry and fetish fashion, it is a good place to start. 

[For the full text of this review see Sandmutopian Guardian # 23] 

See also Steele's latest book: The Corset, a Cultural History.

If you're looking to make your own corset, this is one of the few books on the subject. It's short, perhaps a bit too short, but it covers everything you need to get started to make a fairly standard corset. If you're looking for patterns, better cloth stores should have a catlogue for Past Patterns which has several corset patterns. 
 

Another book worth looking at if you're interested in making a corset is: 
Norah Waugh's, Corsets and Crinolines (Theatre Arts Books, 1995) 

Originally published in 1954, it is primarily concerned with the design of theater costumes and includes a wealth of information. She traces corset design through history and includes an appendix on corset construction. 

Another useful book is Robert Doyle's Waisted Efforts: an Illustrated Guide to Corset Making. It features instructions for a number of historic corset designs, though the illustraitons could be better.