Here’s an odd one for you. A new product appeared on the market in England in 1816, enigmatically named the Divorce Corset.

The name had nothing to do with marital discord. The purpose of the Divorce Corset (or D.C., as I will now euphemistically refer to it), was to separate the bosom (as I will euphemistically call it), rather than flattening a woman’s front by a board (or so-called busk), as had happened in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or smooshing it upward into a shelf-like mono-bosom (as would happen a bit later in the nineteenth century). The D.C. came with a piece of triangular-shaped, padded steel that was shoved into the center front of the corset, achieving an amicable separation. The style only lasted a short time. The mono-bosom look returned; seamstresses sewed little pillows inside the dress to fill in the cleavage area.

I couldn’t find a picture of one, but the portrait above is dated 1816 and she looks as though she might be wearing a D.C., don’t you think?

Source: Elizabeth Ewing, Dress and Undress, and Eline Canter Cremers-van der Does The Agony of Fashion