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Lucy’s Corsetry Review: Lara Black Cotton Steel Boned Underbust Corset

Posted on by Rachel Barb
Lucy’s Corsetry Review: Lara Black Cotton Steel Boned Underbust Corset
02
Mar

Featured Corset: Lara Black Cotton Corset, Cotton Double Steel Boned Underbust Corset

Video Transcription

Hi everybody. For this week’s video I’m going to be reviewing the Lara underbust Corset by Glamorous Corsets. So here’s the front, side, back, and the other side. For the length and fit of this corset, the center front here is 12.5 inches, and the princess seam here is 9.5 inches. At the side seam it’s 10.5, and in the center back it’s 12.5 inches. This is kind of a mid hip corset. My iliac crest is about an inch above, underneath the lower edge of this corset here. But you can still fit this corset if you have an average length torso, if you’re at least 9.5 inches from under the breast to the top of the lap here.

Today I’m wearing a size 24, so it’s 24 inches closed waist. The rib cage here is 31 inches, so the underbust here has a seven inch rib spring, and at the hip it’s 34 inches, so it has a ten inch hip spring. You can see that it gives me a moderate hourglass silhouette, and it has a slightly conical rib cage here. So let’s go to the tabletop portion now and I can show you the details of this corset up close.

So here’s the Lara underbust Corset laid flat. For the materials, it feels like two layers of black cotton bull denim. The front panels feel a little bit more crispy, a little bit more sturdy, so i believe that the front panels were interfaced, but the other panels of this corset were not. The other panels are just the two layers of black cotton. For the labels, on each half of the corset, like the left side, right side, there is a little size label on the top edge. Here is the Glamorous Corset label in the back by the modesty panel. This label has the fabric content, and the cleaning instructions. There is no label for the country of manufacture.

Excuse some of the fuzz and dust on this dust bag here, but the corset also came with this really lovely velvet finish dust bag to help protect and store your corset, and you can see it has the label on it as well. This corset was drafted to have a six panel pattern, so it’s 12 panels total. One, two, three makes the front. Four, five, six make the back here. You can see that the front two panels taper a little bit towards the lower center front there, and the bones converge, so it helps give a little bit more control over the lower tummy. Panel three and four have some of the curve to go over the hip here. You can see that panel four is quite hourglass shaped, and a little bit on the skinnier side. Panels five and six have less of the curve.

How this corset was constructed was using the welt seam method. I am going to make a video on the different types of ways that you can assemble a corset, because it actually does matter. But instead of the sandwich method, which is basically where you create on layer sewing from panel one to panel six. You create the lining layer sewing from panel one to panel six. Then you put them together and sew in between. When you’re doing the welt seam method you do both layers panel one, both layers panels two, both layers panel three, and on until you get to the end here.

So if I go really quickly into the difference, when you’re doing the welt seam method you see a bit of a top stitch here, and a top stitch on the back there. Whereas in the sandwich method you see more of it as stitched in the ditch, and lock stitched. In the sandwich method more often than not you have the seam allowances pressed open, so there’s a little bit to either side. But with the welt seam method there’s always going to be one side at the same that has more seam allowance, so it’s going to be a little bulkier than the other side. So that’s why you might see that this bony channel is a little bit skinnier, whereas this one is wider, it’s a bit bulkier. Because they needed more space to slide that bone in with all that seam allowance in there.

Because the fabric is a little bit thicker it takes a little bit to be able to feel the waist tape, but I do feel that there is one in here. It might be an inch wide, and run from the center front to the center back here. The binding is made from matching strips of black cotton bull denim, and it’s machine stitched on the outside, and also on the inside here. You can see that on the outside it was stitched in the ditch, so you don’t see any top stitch there, it was fairly tidy, and of course there is the lip on the inside. On the inside there are really teeny tiny garter tabs. There are three on each side for a total of six.

It is six and a half inches wide, so I would say about four and a half inches of usable space once you get to the center back edge there. It is unstiffened, made with two layers of this black cotton bull denim to match the rest of the corset. If you don’t like modesty panels then it’s attached to one side of the corset here with a row of stitching. You can just take a seam ripper and take out that row of stitching, and the modesty panel will come right out. Additionally there is a quarter inch wide modesty plaque in the front here extending out from the knob side of the busk, again, finished in the same black bull denim.

This corset has an 11 inch long busk, and it is a standard flexible busk, half an inch wide on each side. It has five loops and pins, the last two a little bit closer together here. Unlike the Jolie corset that I had reviewed last time from the same company, this corset does not have an adjacent bone by the busk here, it’s just the busk itself. So you can see it’s pretty standard and flexible. This corset has a total of 24 bones, 12 on each side, of course not including the center front busk here. So double bone on the seams, two, four, six, eight, ten. These are a quarter inch wide spiral steel bones, so you can see that it does attract the magnet here. Of course there are two flat bones sandwiching the grommets on each side.

So again, the boning channels seem to be a little bit wider than they need to be, so I want to wear this corset in a little longer, and see if the bones do or do not twist in their channels. So far they’ve been holding in pretty well. But this corset is a relatively low reduction for me, because my natural waist is about 28 inches, and this closes at 24, so I’m not putting a huge amount of tension on this corset. Because there’s a lot of layers of fabric right here, and the fabric has a lot of body to it, it doesn’t seem to warp a lot, but I want to wear it a little bit longer and see if there’s any change.

So here’s a close up of the grommets. There are a total of 24 of them, 12 on each side. They have a small to medium flange around them, and they’re finished in silver. They are set more or less equidistantly down the back here. Moving the modesty panel aside you can see the underside of the grommets. Nice big washers. The washers are actually bigger than the top hat part of the grommet. This is actually a good thing, because the wider the washer, the less likely the grommets are going to pull out of the corset later on. The back of these grommets, all of them have a couple of splits in them. But because of the choice of the corset lacing it’s actually not catching too badly on any of the splits here.

The laces that came with the Lara corset are your pretty standard, quarter in wide, black flat nylon, shoelace style laces. They have a bit of spring to them, but they are difficult to snap or break. They are quite abrasion resistant. They don’t catch on the laces, or shred a lot. They are very very long. But overall they are pretty standard.

The Lara underbust Corset by Glamorous Corset is available in closed waist sizes from 18 inches up to 40 inches. It’s available in the black cotton you see here, as well as white cotton, tan cotton, and also a black mesh. From sizes 18 to 30 it costs $79 US, and from sizes 32 up to 40 it costs $84 US.

This concludes my review of the Lara underbust corset by Glamorous Corset. I hope you enjoyed this video, and you learned something new. If you did, please remember to click that like button down there as it helps support this channel. If you have any comments or questions about this corset, feel free to leave a comment down below. I will see all of you next week for another video. Bye.