Edwardian Era

The Edwardian silhouette (roughly 1901 to the early 1910s, named for the reign of Edward VII) is built entirely around one undergarment: the straight-fronted "health" or "S-bend" corset, introduced in 1900 by the French physician and corsetière Inès Gaches-Sarraute. Its rigid front busk forced the torso forward and the hips back, producing the curved, S-shaped side profile — a soft, forward-leaning "pouter pigeon" bust above a smooth, straight front through the abdomen — that's the clearest visual marker separating this era from both the Victorian hourglass before it and the flatter 1920s silhouette after.

Sewing a reproduction bodice for this era, the thing I notice most is how much the corset does work the bodice pattern doesn't have to. Because the S-bend corset already holds a specific curve, Edwardian bodices could be a little softer and less heavily boned themselves than a lot of Victorian bodices, often relying on soft gathering (a blouse-like "pigeon front" bodice was genuinely fashionable) rather than tight structural fitting throughout.

It's a short era by the standards of this site's decade-by-decade coverage — call it a decade, a bit less — but a visually distinct one, and worth treating separately from the Victorian entries it's constantly compared against.