On Tuesday, I stopped into the costume shop to see what was going on, and I ended up getting a little lesson on corsets. For NRT's production of Emma, the costume shop is making six 19th century style corsets, one for each female performer.
Janice Stauffer, the costume designer for Emma, let me take pictures of a corset in progress, from patterns to piecing together though boning and adding grommets:
Stages of a Corset
While there, I also heard a bunch of loud hammering coming from part of shop. Not sure what would involve hammering in a costume shop, I went to investigate. I found out that one of the stages of making a corset is adding the grommets, which are the reinforced eyelets for the corset's lacing. Although I wouldn't have thought it was such an intensive process, adding grommets has a lot of steps and so I went ahead an filmed a demonstration for you.
Each corset has about eight grommets per side. So, with six corsets for Emma, this process will be repeated ninety-six times!
I learned so much in visiting the costume shop and I look forward to finding out more to share with you throughout the weeks!
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