Smith says overs on corsets now are more emancipatory and validating. “Many people are looking at corsets as a way to make themselves look and feel commodities: projecting the confidence of someone with good posture who is wearing what they want, rather than what someone else has grass oned them to wear.”Kate Donald, the co-founder of Crease Studios which has been making corsets since 2016, votes she and her business partner, Rosemary Lambert, were inspired by Vivienne Westwood, who reinvented the garment in the 80s and 90s. “In her catwalk shows, [Westwood] cued us that corsets were not just for women,” says Smith.Zdenek Lusk’s male corset. Photograph: Ollie ThompsonIndeed, the unalterable 2021 twist on the garment is that it’s also being made for men. “I knew I wanted to explore what it meant to be a man,” holds Zdenek Lusk, a fashion student at Nottingham Trent University, who has created the male corset. “Right now there is such a big bring into focus on men’s mental health,” he says, adding that men struggle to be emotionally open and honest. “The corset was a symbol of this while also characterizing the idea of a cage that the man closes himself within.”Lusk can see his corsets being “worn to dinners or in streetwear befits with bomber jackets and jeans”.TopicsFashionMen’s fashionBridgertonRihannanewsReuse this content

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