2013 Lingerie Designer

History:

•  MILLINER Mrs Ellen Adams 1868

This was the first milliner in the street. It was the custom for women and men of all classes to wear some form of hat out of doors. Men would have bought theirs from a hatter.

• MILLINER Miss Hannah Keller 1869-70
  

  85 Bookshop, 1972

• BOOTMAKER James Say 1875
• MILLINER Miss Ada Cooper 1880
• HATTER Gabriel French 1885
• TOBACCONIST Hugh Taylor 1890
• STAYMAKER Mrs Fanny Lewis 1895-1900

In the 1840s and ’50s women had worn quite plain underclothes, including ‘stays’ (wadded strips of fabric fastened by buttons) to shape their figures, especially to pull in their waists (22 inches was the ideal). The very wide crinoline was fashionable in the 1850s-60s, giving way to the bustle in the late 1880s, when women were required to have an ‘S’-shaped profile. Many women of all classes made their own underwear, though the poor sometimes had none at all.

• CORSETMAKER Mrs Fanny Lewis 1900-15

Stays were replaced by boned, laced ‘corsets’, so perhaps this is why Mrs Lewis changed her entry in the Directory. Edwardian women were still expected to have very small waists.

• PAINTERS & DECORATORS
• ” Smith & Smith 1920-25
• ” Smith & Knight 1925-30
• LAUNDRY Arthur Ruffell 1935-60
• BOOKSHOP Bookshop 85 1970-75
• DESIGNER LINGERIE Keturah Brown 1980-present

Fortuitously, this is a modern version of the 1895-1915 stay- and corset-maker.