I am so excited to announce that my collaboration for the Extended Size Collection with Timeless Trends is finally available! Eight silhouettes in sizes up to 50 inches closed waist, designed to fit wearers with natural waists of up to 65 inches!
Available silhouettes include:
- Hourglass short (cincher), standard underbust, and longline
- Slim standard underbust, and longline
- Gemini longline (conical/straight rib only)
- Overbusts in both hourglass and slim silhouettes
To start an order, feel free to send me your measurements and I’ll get back to you personally with my recommendation for the correct size, length, and silhouette. If you’d like to read about the journey to get here and the features of this extended collection, please read on below!
The History of the Project
I first started working on this project in June of 2024 (nearly a year ago!). It was originally called The 3rd Standard Deviation Project. Sexy name, I know – but the whole point was that less than 3% of the corseting population wears smaller than an 18-inch waist but they are still catered to by most brands, while more than 3% of the prospective clients that come through my contact form have a natural waist above 50″ and almost no corset brands cater to this demographic, which is unfair by all accounts.
To clarify: Timeless Trends’ standard, or “straight” sizes go up to a 42″ closed waist, which will fit folks with a natural waist of 52 inches or so with a lacing gap. The extended (or plus) sizes begin at waist size 44″ and currently go up to 50″ (which would fit clients with natural waists up to about 65 inches).
My supplier said the patterns could easily be scaled up as is, but I felt that this would be a disservice to this demographic. And I could speak from experience this time.
If I can speak personally for a second: for the first 2 years postpartum, I was obese. My pregnancy was smooth and unremarkable (I gained the expected, “healthy” 35 lbs), but after a traumatic birth experience and a baby that never slept longer than 40 mins to 2 hours for the two years of his life, I developed horrible PPD and PPA. Due to hormone imbalances, multiple corrective surgeries after the birth, and antidepressants to keep me going – my size kept going up after the birth of my son, instead of down. I did not size out of TT’s “straight” sizes, but I did size into the plus size range of many modern clothing brands. I received enough of a taste navigating the world as a larger woman during this period that I saw the shortcomings of plus size size street clothes and formal gowns; how many of them are carelessly graded. How ‘body positivity’ from fashion brands feels watered down when the fit of their plus size clothing is really an afterthought.
Having learned how to dress, decorate, and celebrate my body across some 70 lbs of weight variation over the past few years, I’m immensely grateful for the experience of having walked a mile of life as a larger woman as this galvanized my desire to approach this project more thoughtfully, and design a collection that considers the specific needs of my larger friends in the corset community.
Using a combination of analytical and empirical data:
Over the last 13-ish years, I’ve built up a body (hah) of over 10,000 sizing consultations. A sizable database of prospective clients with waist sizes ranging from 17 inches naturally, up to 70+ inches. From this, I know that bodily proportions and weight distributions have certain trends. I asked my supplier if I could try to grade up the patterns with small tweaks to make them more likely to fit larger bodies. They said go for it – and it would become my pet project for the next year, covering all costs for the samples, testing, etc.
Of the 10,000 data points, I pulled the largest ~100 waist sizes (my Patreon last year said 60, but I had since gone back and added more to get a better average of proportions and springs when I was getting analysis paralysis).
That being said, taking averages of the data was only part of the story. Adipose distribution (where a person carries their weight) is very diverse in fuller figured folks. In the very lean demographic, there are relatively minor skeletal variations (like the width of hip bones or the length of a torso) but it doesn’t hold a candle to how larger people carry body weight, based on their hormones, genetic makeup, presence of lymphedema or lipedema, etc. So it was important to me to also enlist the help of fit testers/models with a variety of body shapes.
As mentioned above, I couldn’t model the extended sizes for myself – but this was a good thing, because it might have been a copout. When I design corsets, I don’t necessarily design them to fit MY body specifically. (The Gemini doesn’t fit my hips, the Libra doesn’t fit my ribs, etc.) And with the enormous diversity of shapes and proportions of fuller figures, it pushed me to test these corsets on a whole team of different testers to see how the same silhouettes fit different bodies. This was also a highly educational process for me as I learned that some of my testers could achieve waist reductions approaching 15 inches!
Without getting too into the weeds, I ended up taking the 8 most popular silhouettes and tweaking nearly everything about them, using a combination of my previous measurement data and the helpful suggestions of my fit testers/models. (I’ll also explain why not all the 13 silhouettes made the cut.)
There were limitations, though. It was a challenge to change the length distributions/ springs/ construction etc. enough to do justice to creating an adequate fit, while also keeping the “essence” of the silhouette and not creating a completely new product from scratch. I was also limited by the length of hardware (read: busk and bones) that my supplier kept in stock, so while I felt like some corsets would’ve benefited to have more length at the lower tummy and upper back, I couldn’t make too many changes because the factory simply did not have the stuff to make it work.
(Sadly, about half of my testers dropped out – some due to the long wait, some due to going on GLP-1 medication and shrinking out of the extended size range, some not comfortable with taking pictures. I do anticipate more pictures rolling in in the near future, but in the meantime, please forgive the sparse photos in this post! It will be updated ASAP.)
Long story short, the resulting changes included:
Raised waistline
The corsets are shorter from waist to underbust, and longer from waist to lap. In general, due to the way adipose accumulates on the love handles, lower tummy and hips, the visibly smallest waistline begins to appear higher than the skeletal waist.
In midsize and smaller clients, I generally request that they bend to the side to try and find their true, skeletal waist measurement because depending on a person’s skeletal frame size and the waist size of a corset, it can be uncomfortable to cinch the “waist” over the lower ribs. (For the majority of the population, a corset size of about 28″ or smaller will “hook” under the ribs to some extent).
However, when it came to the extended size collection, since the waist sizes start at 44″, there is little chance of the waist tape of the corset causing discomfort to the floating ribs. The priority then turns to helping the corset to stay in place (prevent riding up) without the assistance of “hooking” beneath the ribs. But if riding up does occur, a shorter waist-to-underbust length will prevent the corset from lifting up the bustline to an unnatural extent (my fit models were all staunchly against the “chin rest” look, to nobody’s surprise). Conversely, a longer waist-to-lap length would to help to cover and support a panniculus (apron tummy).
Special consideration for bust support
Speaking of “chin rest”, how the bust is supposed to fit may have been one of the hardest to tweak. Especially considering 10 different brands of bras will ALL fit differently, despite all of them saying “full coverage 34C” for example – bust support is really hard to get right on ONE person, and an impossible task to fit everyone equally well with just one or two overbust styles.
I will be discussing how bust support in overbusts are so very different from bras in a separate upcoming article, but the main point I want to convey here is that it’s 100% normal to experience a slight interstice between your sternum and the corset. An overbust corset will not ‘tack’, unless you’re specifically looking at a bespoke overbust with cups. And honestly, speaking from experience, I’m not certain you would even want the overbust to tack, because corsets have zero stretch and if a corset is drafted to fit flush with your contracted ribs, then it cannot accommodate natural expansion from breathing, movement, and flesh displacement. You’ll appreciate having an extra inch or two of space to allow your ribs to expand so you can, you know, breathe. If the space at the sternum annoys you, stick a handkerchief down there (and it will also serve to catch any perspiration!). But please look at AC and marvel that there is NO chin rest happening, even when sitting down!
In the next section, I’ll also go into why a couple inches of extra space at the ribs (even in underbust corsets) are helpful too.
Straighter (and smaller) rib…
The original hourglass corsets feature a gently rounded rib shape, following the “anatomical” convex shape of a natural rib cage. But for the extended collection, I deliberately opted for a more conical/tapered silhouette from the waist up for two different reasons:
The first is that I thought a funnel-shaped rib will help grip the body more firmly than a thin band of pressure only at the waistline, thus preventing riding up on the body. I went down a physics rabbit-hole when I discovered that the amount of surface area of contact between two objects does not actually influence the amount of friction between them. Grade 10 physics equations say this plainly, but intuitively it’s hard to wrap the mind around.
However, the amount of pressure between the two surfaces does count for something, and because a straighter rib leads to less overall volume inside the corset compared to a cupped rib, this translates to extra pressure forces on the body. The hope is this pressure is diffuse enough to be comfortable for the wearer, but firm enough to maintain static friction, keeping the corset in place to prevent riding up or sliding over time (kinetic friction).
The second reason that I opted for a straight rib is because with exception of ONE datapoint in my 100 set, everyone had an underbust measurement significantly smaller than their natural waist. (While TikTokers love to talk about ‘big back’, fuller figured folks almost universally have a smaller rib circumference than their waist. That being said, I myself literally have a proportionally broader back compared to the general population, and understand the need for mitigation of flesh displacement – so it’ll be addressed in another point below.)
Back to straight rib though – there are several silhouettes available for folks with different waist-to-rib proportions. But you’ll find in the extended collection, all of them have a straight rib, and a rib spring slightly more narrow than their “straight size” counterparts. As mentioned before, it minimizes the volume so it grips onto the ribs – but even then, many of my fit models had a natural rib slightly smaller than the corset itself – we had to find a sweet spot between small enough to not ride up, but big enough to hold in any displacement.
… But not too small.
Every corset wearer, regardless of size, experiences flesh displacement (it’s a law of physics that happens to even very lean people, not a size-dependent thing). In general, the more dramatic the waist reduction, the more space you should leave at the top and/or bottom to allow a place for flesh displacement to settle. I will only need about 1 inch of extra space in the ribs with a 4 inch waist reduction, but I’ll need about 2.5-3 inches of extra rib space for a corset that reduces my waist by 7 or 8 inches.
Additionally, about 75% of people I find squish upwards, so while some corseters (like Cathie Jung) do experience a visible downward displacement, I’ve found that the majority (including myself) need between 1-3 extra inches of space at the underbust when achieving dramatic waist reductions.
ALL of my testers could achieve dramatic waist reductions – a 10 inch (25cm) waist reduction is around an 18% reduction when someone is starting with a natural waist of 55 inches. That displacement needs somewhere to go, which made it all the more important to have enough room in the ribs.
“But wait, I thought you just said that larger bodies have smaller ribs?” Yeah, I did. It’s complicated. This is why it’s important to have a collection of different silhouettes, as opposed to only one or two “plus size” designs. It’s hard to generalize bodies, but this is what I’ve been attempting to do for the past year in creating standardized patterns. I can say that as bodies get larger, the rib spring trends smaller – but they still need some space. This leads nicely into the next pattern tweak:
Re-distribution of front and back ribs
I found that a common complaint of the pre-existing straight-size patterns was that they were too big in the front and too small in the back. To the point that it was almost gaping at the front ribs, and cutting into the latissimus dorsi muscles in the back. Numbering the panels (so #1 is the center front by the busk, and #6 is the center back by the laces) I ended up taking a wedge from panel 2 (at the front ribs) and adding that extra space to panel 5 (around the side back/ scapula region). It was hard to decide exactly HOW much of this to redistribute, because all bodies are different, so I trusted the data I had collected from the past decade, and also verified the fit with my testers. Some of my models would have appreciated more change in the front/back distribution while others were okay with what was already done.
This is the tricky part about designing for off-the-rack. Many moons ago, I used to accept made-to-measure commissions – and it’s hard for me to know exactly when to stop testing and tweaking. With custom commissions, you kept making mockups until the fit was perfect. With OTR, you have to find a fit that’s “good enough” for about 80% of people. Add to that you also have to keep within the restrains/specifications of each silhouette as set by TT, and the availability of hardware at the factory, so the designs don’t morph into an entirely different beast. I have already changed the patterns a little more than I think my supplier would have preferred, but the feedback has been wonderful which has made it all worth the effort.
Extra wide, rigid busk
Recalling our previous conversation about how bodies are incredibly diverse: the shapes of tummies are VERY diverse. You may have heard of “B” shaped tummies (like example E below), and “D” shaped tummies (like example F), but there are many in between – especially depending on history of pregnancy, repeated weight gain/loss, and what’s going on genetically and hormonally.
I personally have a “D” belly (resembling the F figure above) like my dad, which unfortunately is associated with more visceral fat. My long-time readers may remember the custom corset I made for my aunt back in 2011, and you can see how “D” shaped tummies run in the family.
I was recently looped into a discussion with a corseter who had a “B” shaped tummy and kept experiencing broken busks. She’d been wearing corsets for years and was very experienced, but every corset she owned eventually bent inward at the waistline in a “3” shape and snapped right in the middle. Problem was, this corseter preferred her corsets to have a flexible front so she could bend at the waist – but with enough movement and stress on those bones over time, breakage was inevitable. One course of action was to create a busk or bone pocket that allowed the bones/busk to be removed and replaced every so often.
But in the case of my supplier, the risk of bones or busks breaking would be unacceptable from a personal safety perspective and also would be costly from their lifetime warranty perspective. For the extended size collection in particular, having a flexible front that yields to many different body types would create a lot of uncertainty in fit, as this uneven pulling at the front would result in counter forces around the sides and back. An extra wide, rigid busk ended up being a great equalizer, creating a predictable and consistent fit across our various testers and models. And anyway, busks can be curved aftermarket to your personal taste.
That said, depending on the length of an apron tummy, and the length of the corset itself, a short rigid busk might poke into the panniculus so it’s important to select the right length. And that in itself can be a challenge! I recall a conversation with Dee Lushious of Luscious Pearl Designs (whom I met at the Oxford Conference of Corsetry) that when an apron tummy extends past the hip flexor, the client may need to decide whether they want to prioritize full coverage/support, or more range of motion. Some folks are able to pull their extra skin upwards in the corset to allow them to sit comfortably, but others may not – and if the corset extends down into the upper thigh area for the sake of full abdominal coverage, sitting down (or bending to tie your shoelaces) can get tricky or sometimes even impossible. So it’s important to educate and manage the expectations of the client while also catering to their needs. And on that note, I am so grateful for the wisdom imparted by Luscious Pearl, The Bad Button, and KMK Designs over the past decade on how the distinctive needs (and expectations) of corseting fuller figures are different from smaller sizes. (If you are looking for a bespoke corset, please check them out!)
More Spirals in the back
I discussed extra bones with all my testers, and it was split across the board as to whether they were necessary or not.
Some of my testers had a pronounced lumbar curve – not necessarily a swayback at the spine level, but they had a higher bum that created the illusion of such. It was important to me to be able to keep the back flexible enough that the bones could curve over the bum/tailbone, and not jab into the flesh in a painful way (but still rigid enough to prevent the lacing system from collapsing).
Tester RM (in the longline corsets above) especially appreciated the flexibility over the back, as she had the most pronounced lumbar curve of my testers. However, the back panels of the corset started developing wrinkles between the bones and I feared that the wrinkles would create a pinch or hot spot in the lumbar area (especially if the corset happened to settle in between two skin folds). For my testers with the size 50″ corsets, some of those back panels exceed 5 inches in width, and vertical tension was starting to be lost. So I spoke with the manufacturer to add extra spiral bones in the middle of panels 5 and 6 at minimum, so it would not reduce the flexibility of the back, but it would maintain better vertical tension to combat wrinkling or hot spots. These pictures featured the samples that didn’t have the bones included, but I’ve been assured that the final products will include these extra bones, and at no extra cost!
What about the other panels? The Gemini corsets still have extra spirals on panels 4 and 5 (at the front hip and back hip), and due to the rigid busk in front, no extra bones are desperately needed on panels 1 and 2.
Raised back and rounded lower tummy
Again, I couldn’t change the length too dramatically because otherwise the factory wouldn’t have the right hardware lengths to fill the channels fully, but I did my best to tweak the height and shape for a beautifully curved, not pointed, upper edge in the back to support the flesh around the scapulae, and lower edge in the bottom front so there is no extra bit of tummy peeking out above the hip flexor. I love an “M” (or upside down 〰️) shaped bottom curve to a corset (see the Gemini corsets as an example) but one tip I learned from Romantasy’s “Corset Magic” book from about 15 years ago is that those with a lower tummy will experience better coverage and more comfortable support when the bottom edge of the corset follows the line of the tummy – and not follow the contours of the lap.
Fit model AC liked the height and shape of the upper back on the hourglass overbust sample – see the relatively smooth line from the corset to the shoulder blades with minimal spill, even when AC’s arms are down. (The extra bones in the middle of the panels would have helped with this sample, and extra hip spring for AC in particular – but again I have to remind myself that this is not custom.)
Another fit model MH really liked the back of her Gemini longline, which shows no spillover even when arms are down.
Longer laces
With my testers achieving somewhere between 10 and 15 inches of waist reduction, the need for extra lacing in the corsets is obvious! The laces from TT are known for being on the shorter side – in the straight sizes, it’s usually enough to allow 8-9 inches of slack in the back of the corset. It got to the point where I was adding in an extra skein of lacing (and eating the cost) for some of my clients if I knew that they would need to open the corset by 12+ inches in order to comfortably get in and out of it. I requested longer laces for all of the extended size collection, and the factory more than delivered. As the kids say these days: “Bet.”
Silhouettes that didn’t make the cut:
As much as we’ve discussed the diversity of body shapes and proportions, 6 of the 14 original silhouettes unfortunately did not get sized up, and that is because when I was looking through my analytical data, nobody would realistically fit them in waist sizes 44″ or up. These silhouettes include:
- The Libra and Libby – in 13 years, I have never come across someone who had a waist exceeding 50″ with a rib that was the same size as their hip. 99% of them had a rib measurement significantly smaller than their natural waist, which made fitting the Libra family of corsets impossible.
- Both Gemini corsets (original length) – while many had the circumferential measurements to fit the Gemini, the 9″ length simply did not do well enough to cover the lower tummy and hips. Thankfully, the Gemini longline worked well! The Gemini Straight (conical) rib longline was a winner, but because all silhouettes had a straightening of their rib shape, the Gemini cupped longline was also phased out of this collection.
- Slim cincher – the original slim cincher has a hip spring of 3 inches. It is so lacking in curves that I stopped carrying it in my shop several years ago (although TT still carries it – there is a tiny demographic who do fit these well!). Even the hourglass cincher (seen right) was at risk of being excluded from the extended collection, but it does look cute as a wide belt, and surprisingly curvy with the changes made to the rib and hip springs! So the hourglass cincher stayed.
How to order a corset, sizes 44″ to 50″
If you think the extended size collection is right for you, feel free to send me your measurements and I’ll get back to you personally with my recommendation for the correct size, length, and silhouette!
Available silhouettes include:
- Hourglass short (cincher), standard underbust, and longline
- Slim standard underbust and longline
- Gemini conical (straight) longline
- Overbusts in both hourglass and slim silhouettes
To start an order, click the button above to see the listing, or reach out to me using the contact form on this page. Because everyone’s body is different, and larger bodies can cinch much more than others, there is a mandatory but free sizing consultation to make sure we send you the best silhouette and size for your needs!
And immense thanks to my incredible team of models who waited so patiently through all the setbacks of the past year, who put up with all my questions, and so generously allowed their pictures to be shared publicly. You have been essential to making this project a reality and I’m grateful for each one of you. 💕