The Christmas corsage, now a vintage item.
For Throwback Thursday, I return to a post published in December 2016. In it, I revisit the Christmas corsage that was all the rage, perhaps for a short time, in some parts of the world. Now considered a vintage item, there are many examples of the Christmas corsage online.
Do you remember Christmas corsages?
When I was young, women wore Christmas corsages on their winter coats in December. The corsages were tinselly, ribbony, sparkly, in summary, gaudy things.
Rarely made of natural products, corsages could be very ornate with elf or angel or other nondescript, questionable figurines tucked in the “greenery”, tinsel, Christmas balls, and ribbons all fighting each other for a place of prominence, or they could be very simple with a few pine cones and red berries.
Most often, there was nothing subtle about the corsage; it was definitely meant to be seen by all.
Elegant women wore the corsage on their fur collared coats.
My version is an understated corsage: the watercolour illustration has red bells and green leaves along with a variety of cones, (all plastic of course), and red satin ribbons.
When I was ten or so, my mother gave me my own corsage. I don’t remember when exactly the Christmas corsage fell out of favour. It was eventually forgotten until it had vintage status.
It is a quaint item of the past that deserves to remain on etsy and ebay and Pinterest.
What Christmas item/food would you like to see disappear and be relegated to the vintage bin?
Beautiful painting!
I remember those corsages – tbh I’ve always been a big fan of sparkly things so I liked some of them, as long as they made light dance in my eyes. In junior high we also had the holiday tradition of pinning bells to our slips so that every move we made was accompanied by the jingling of invisible bells. LOL – I’m ancient!
😁👋
Christmas corsages certainly added a bit of brightness on dark winter coats! I think this was a passing fad in North America only. I researched and could not find much on them. I have never heard of bells on slips. That might have been annoying under certain circumstances but so much fun at a dance! Thanks for sharing!
Love what you have done with this corsage, unfortunately not a tradition I am aware of here in Australia
I wonder why it started and ended in North America. I did search for the origins and couldn’t find anything on the Christmas corsage itself. Thanks for letting me know Sally.