Lecturer Graham Cottenden is teaching a new generation how to make the garment loved by Madonna, reports Faith Eckersall

Thanks to Madonna and the mania for burlesque, the corset has come back into fashion.

For some, however, this garment and the skills required to make it have never gone away. And Graham Cottenden, senior lecturer on the prestigious Costume with Performance Design degree at the Arts University Bournemouth, is one of those people.

His initial ambitions to become a train driver or an England footballer quickly gave way to the lure of the theatre and the silver screen, and the precision skills needed to design and create costumes for productions such The Last Emperor, or the BBC’s Definitive Shakespeare cycle.

Corsets, he says, are the foundation garment of so many period costumes.

“You do get a nice shape with a corset,” he says.

He runs a twice-yearly corset-making evening class, where students come and spend ten weeks: “The equivalent of five days,” learning how to design, cut and create a 19th century corset.

“Students may be interested in costume or pure fashion,” he says.

“People may be interested in the burlesque side or it or creating a garment to give them the figure they’ve always dreamed of.”

Another reason for their popularity may be because they are “small and nicely self-contained”.

“They are very pleasing to make because you can decorate and personalise them,” he says. One student created a stars-and-stripes corset to wear on July 4.

Graham can make a corset in two days. Even the exquisitely boned, shaped, quilted and laced numbers he shows me from a sample collection, some of which were made by his wife.

“This is an 1820s corset,” he says, pulling out a pink number.

“It’s softer, with not quite so much boning.”

He fishes out another, this time smaller and made from satin.

“This is a wasp-waisted sports or Edwardian corset.”

And then he shows me a beautiful bright blue number, explaining that it did the job of a bra for the wearer: “Nowadays bras are really just what’s left of corsets.”

Given his extensive knowledge, it’s surprising to learn that he doesn’t specialise in corsetry: “My specialist area is male costume design and tailoring.”

The ferocious amount of skills required to make these garments are well-taught at Bournemouth and the degree Graham helped set up is, he says, the university’s flagship course.

But for those who have already made their corset there is a new course in the pipeline, in female period costume cutting, to be held in the evenings.

“Corsets very much underpin the wedding dresses of today and the ball gowns so we’ll be looking at bodices and sleeves and the couture work of people like Worth,” he says.

“We hope it will be as popular as the corsets.”

This piece is from our new Seven Days magazine, free in this weekend's Echo.