CORSET SKORTCorset Playsuit with Asymmetric Wrap Skort

A corset is a foundation garment. It was designed to be worn under something, which means that every time you want to wear one out, you are solving the same puzzle — what goes over it, what goes under it, and whether the three of them will still be sitting where you left them at eleven o'clock.

The Corset Skort answers that by refusing to be three garments. The bodice is a true corset: shaped panels with boning laid into the seams, a square neckline set wide across the collarbones, and wide self-fabric straps that buckle at the back so the neckline height is adjustable rather than assumed. Below the waist seam it does not stop. It continues into a skirt.

That skirt is cut on the diagonal and wrapped, one edge crossing the other and finishing in a soft point at the hip, with a split that opens as you walk. Underneath it, and joined to it, are tailored shorts with a curved hem — so what reads as a mini dress from the front behaves like a playsuit when you sit, climb into a car, or dance.

The back is where the corset declares itself. Two columns of eyelets and a flat satin ribbon run the length of the bodice, laced over a modesty panel, letting the waist be drawn in or eased out by the wearer rather than by a size label. The pattern is graded across nine sizes, 22 to 38 inches at the natural waist, in two-inch steps. Above them the back is left open. Below them the shorts pick up the line and carry it down.

The pattern is not tied to one cloth. It is cut in a rotating range of fabrics, and because the shaping lives in the seams rather than in the stretch, the silhouette holds whichever one it is made up in — the weight and the hand change, the line does not. Two pockets are set into the side seams, which is the detail people notice last and remember longest.

The result is one garment that does the work of an outfit, and a corset you can wear without planning an evening around it.