Our plan to make the corset more popular

We wrote a letter containing information about corsets and corseting and sent them to a number of mail order firms and department stores. Our intention was to persuade the firms to offer corsets as an attractive piece of lingerie for women. Imagine how great it would be if clothing catalogs contained corsets! And if these offers were specially designed for young women! As small waists are desirable with the new fashion, such an offer could cause a run on corsets! It of course depends on how the corsets are offered and on the information given to the customers. It is essentially important to tell women how to use the corset, otherwise most of them will soon give it up. As I mentioned before, we sent the letter to a number of mail order firms and department stores. But so far we haven't got many replies. Some firms answered that they had thoroughly thought about our proposal, but that it was not executable for them for various reasons (prices, production, customers, etc.). But all of them were very friendly and pointed out that it was basically a good idea to offer corsets. Others didn't answer at all. But one firm - a very small one - showed a lively interest in this matter and started a nice correspondence with us. We gave them adresses of corsetiers, which they wrote to and ordered their catalogs. This firm had already planned to offer corsets in their winter catalog before they received our letter! We were both pleased and surprised by this fact. They sent us a copy of their catalog draft showing two corsets and a bodice. We were even given the opportunity to suggest some advertising slogans. Of course we did so. They accepted one of our slogans. Meanwhile the catalog has been issued, but the result was not as we desired it to be. The firm decided to get the corsets from a very cheap Polish producer. In order to thank me the firm sent me one of the bodices. When I tried it on I noticed that it is not at all fit to make the waist smaller because the material is very weak and the whole thing is very cheaply produced and likely to break. If the corsets are the same - which is likely because they are from the same producer, but which we hope is not the case - then our campaign caused rather the opposite of what we intended. Besides they offer only the sizes S, M, L which in our opinion is not enough. Moreover this small firm demands too high prices.

The big mail order firms didn't answer at all. We hope this is because they're still thinking about our proposal and that they'll answer soon! We think that it is very important for the customers who order a corset to get an information leaflet with this garment. Or how else should a woman know how to use a corset? A hundred years ago daughters learned it from their mother, but in our days the corset is a strange and unknown garment and women have to learn how to handle it.