Metal grommet
When you’re just starting out in this wonderful world of costuming, you tend to use what’s easy and fast. This is no crime, we’ve all done it, that’s to be expected. If you want to lace up a garment, you need to reinforce the lacing holes so they don’t wear out, and you find some handy little metal ring things at the fabric store, either small one-part, punch-in eyelets or the bigger two-part grommets. You insert them in the front of a renfaire bodice or the back of a Victorian ballgown or maybe the sides of a medieval fitted gown, lace it tight with ribbons, and you’re good to go.
Visible panty lines by Lord Copplepot, Wikimedia Commons
Seems like the perfect solution, right? Well, sure, those metal eyelets and grommets work. But they were not used in outerwear in historical periods before the 20th century. Grommets were intended for underwear and shoes only.
Throughout most of history, laced garments had hand-worked eyelets. Small, simple holes covered over in something like a buttonhole stitch. They weren’t always the prettiest things either, but they were functional. Sometimes, a metal ring (like a jump ring used in jewelry) was bound underneath the stitches to make it even stronger. But plain old stitching can reinforce the holes pretty well.
When metal grommets were first introduced, they were used on corsets in the 19th century (in 1828, according to Norah Waugh in Corsets and Crinolines). (more…)
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