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The Foundation of Beauty

From the collection of

Wessex Film and Sound Archive is based in Winchester. Providing the opportunity to see and hear history, the archive contains nearly 40,000 film, video and sound recordings relating to Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, ranging from late Victorian times to the present day. It includes both amateur and professional material, local newsreels, military and maritime subjects, as well as footage produced by individuals, businesses and organisations.

The Foundation of Beauty

Wessex Film and Sound Archive
Portsmouth
1 Jan 1930
Silent
7m

The Foundation of Beauty is what lies beneath - as this parade of corsetted ladies reveal - with corsets to suit all shapes, sizes and ages

This film shows a succession of models wearing a variety of corset types. Intertitles reveal the corset's name and its price - in pre-decimalisation currency. Each corset is aimed at a particular type of customer and for a particular function - from corsets suitable for outdoors and sports to those intended for evening wear. The intertitles delicately mention that certain corsets are aimed at the fuller figure while others are more suitable for younger women and girls.

The Portsea Island Mutual Co-operative Society's first shop opened in Charles Street in 1873. A larger site was acquired in Fratton Road and a central grocery and drapery were opened in 1883. In the early 1930s a site opposite the old premises was developed before it was destroyed by fire in 1934. Co-operative House, which was built on the site in 1937. It was destroyed by bombing in 1941 and rebuilt after the war. The 1950s saw neighbouring co-operatives transferred to PIMCO while closer links were established with other regional societies in the 1980s. By 2009 there were 120 Co-op Community stores spread across the region, covering Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Sussex and parts of Dorset and Wiltshire.

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From the collection

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Caring mums, hard-working housewives or independent, fun-loving 'new women' - the female consumer has long been a target of screen advertising.

In the cause of selling anything from baked beans to washing powders to all manner of labour-saving devices, advertisers have promised to make women's lives easier and to help them build happy homes and successful relationships.

There's no getting past the fact that women have all-too often been patronised and objectified by a male-dominated advertising industry. But screen advertising also tells (and sells) a more positive story of social progress for women, with increasing social and economic independence. This collection tracks the ups and downs of female empowerment in the 20th century, with its false steps as revealing as its forward ones.