Vancouver corsetier Melanie Tarkington has a world-class passion for wearable art

Waspy, snatched, hourglass: however she calls it, Melanie Talkington puts her lifetime in corsetry down to the late Dolly Parton’s tiny waist.
Just one glimpse of the legendary singer in the early ‘80s’ film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and she became obsessed.

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“Dolly had this amazing figure, but most women were not shaped like her,” the owner of Vancouver’s Lace Embrace Atelier corset store enthuses. “I had such a hankering even as a seven-year-old to understand how she got her figure, why more women weren’t shaped like that and how could I achieve it?”

From revelling in Madonna’s revelatory-at-the-time Like a Virgin era, of her bustiers and lingerie, to finally purchasing online a 19th-century red corset from New York City made by the U.K.’s William F. Thomas & Co., she started working out these old patterns and sewing her own corsets as a student in 1996. The shop opened in 2008 followed by her Antique Corset Museum within its walls a decade later.

Collected over 30 years, Talkington now curates a display rotating through more than 550 corsets in possibly the only space dedicated just to corsets in Canada — from the perfunctory ones worn by women in the asylums of 20th century England (the lingerie of the day), to the highly decorative black corsets with lattice ribbons and pink and yellow stripes from France.

“French corsets have an amazing cut,” she continues. “The way the stripes follow the line of the body and go out at the hips creates this crazy optical illusion that makes your waist look even smaller.”

The Kwantlen College fashion design graduate has become the go-to person for people retiring their outfits (“When you’re a collector you just can’t say no”). More than 100 belonging to the late Cathie Jung were recently shipped up from North Carolina to Talkington. At 15 inches (38.1 centimetres), Jung’s tight-laced waist was the smallest on a living person for almost 25 years, according to Guinness World Records.

She’s also fitted corsets for Dita Von Teese, the burlesque superstar famed for her lavish martini-glass routine, and joined her, to boot, for an opening of her notable Crazy Horse cabaret club show in Paris in 2006, as well as a spot of lingerie shopping in L.A. “She’s beyond stylish,” Talkington sighs.

“I love that corsets are this piece of wearable art that not only supports the body and helps with better posture, but enhances the shape,” says the corsetiere whose roster of creating pieces for movies and shows include Interview with the Vampire, Sucker Punch, Yellowjackets and Off Campus. (Expect main protagonist Hannah’s bunny satin corset to be the de rigueur costume for Halloween.) “They can be sexy, but it’s not about lacing tight until you can’t breathe.”

She rails against the thought that corsets hold women back or that it was men forcing them into them. These early garments from Europe in the 16th century — originally called “stays” and frequently created out of whalebone (or baleen) — became the foundation to hang a skirt’s layers and petticoats. “Millions of women wore them for hundreds of years and I don’t think women would have adopted the corset if it was uncomfortable.”

She’s also curious about the stories behind the pieces in her collection (10 are currently on loan to Roedde House Museum in Vancouver and 40 of hers joined a display at the Louvre in Paris a decade ago). “It’s not just about the people in them, but also why did certain pieces get saved?” she says, noting one that had words scrawled all over it in French: “Do not touch these. They must remain a relic and belong to my great grandmother.”

While the writing may have ruined the esthetic of this robust piece, it adds another layer to its preservation over the centuries while other more decorative corsets offer a more highfalutin backstory. “There’s one that clearly came from the time of the royal court in France, and who knows: did Marie Antoinette see it?” she muses, while running her fingers through its 18th-century silver and gold threads.

Of course, there’s the more Hollywood-style story where theatrically someone clings to a bedpost while a corset is tortuously tightened, à la Gone with the Wind. But, frankly, Talkington gives a damn: “I’ve seen many corsets damaged by people putting it on that way.”

In a full circle moment, she met Parton during her last concert in Vancouver 10 years ago and gave her a corset. “I told her I sew, not sing,” she laughs, adding she discovered that the legend never wore the same outfit twice. “It was so amazing to hear how much she loved corsets.”

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