Cooper's Corsets

For 125 years, the picturesque Georgian market town of Ashbourne in Derbyshire was the home of corset makers Richard Cooper & Company.

Richard Cooper was originally a farmer. In the 1850s he went into partnership with Charles Smith, a draper's assistant who set up a 'stay works' in Ashbourne. 'Stays' later evolved into corsets.

The firm began in a cottage but by 1864 it had grown successful enough to establish a factory in the centre of Ashbourne, known as 'Cooper's Mill'. By 1898 the company had 500 employees.

Sadly, few records of the first 50 years of the business survive. This is the only Victorian corset pattern in the company's archive and dates to 1889.

After Smith's death in 1877, Richard Cooper took over the business. The company continued to thrive under the management of his son, William Hill Cooper, who took over after Richard Cooper's death in 1885.

Women bought their corsets from local drapers shops, and in the firm's early days, Richard Cooper & Company appear to have made corsets which could be sold by drapers under various brand names.

The company also had its own brand name, 'Excelsior'. This would be the brand with which Coopers would become most well known.

Although known as corset makers, Coopers' products changed with fashion. In the early 20th Century brassieres were invented. Coopers began to make brassieres and girdles, also sold under the Excelsior brand name.

Foundation garments to support and improve the figure were worn by teenagers and women in the mid-20th Century. The company's marketing emphasized their comfort when moving and exercising.

As the firm grew, it established additional factories in Derby and Uttoxeter. In the 1950s it expanded into Buxton, and had a fleet of 'Excelsior' delivery vans.

Whilst offering a wide variety of corsets, corselettes, wraparounds, girdles and brassieres, in the 1960s the firm still produced traditional 19th Century style corsets.

1960s and 1970s fashions favoured a more natural figure. Despite Coopers attempts to appeal to a younger audience, corsetry declined in popularity, and by the 1980s the company was struggling.