Corsets were originally quilted waistcoats, which French women wore as an alternative to stiff corsets. They were only quilted linen, laced in the front, and unboned. That garment was meant to be worn on informal occasions, while stays were worn for court dress. In the 1790s, stays began to fall out of fashion. That coincided with the French Revolution and the adoption of neoclassical styles of dress. It was the men, so-called dandies, who began to wear corsets. The fashion persisted through the 1840s, though, after 1850, men who wore corsets claimed they needed them for back pain.
