Wearing a corset to a job interview
Chloé Rogers walks me through her Scarlett Gasque world.
I have been more obsessed with HBO’s The Gilded Age than anything else right now in media. Set in the 1880s, the dresses women donned required layers upon layers of undergarments with corsets at the foundation to deliver the proper silhouette. Fashion of then, was about shielding those layers of femininity, the secrets we all now see in department stores (Spanx and all), from public visibility. Fast forward a few years, wars, and a Beyoncé, advancements in feminism and a detachment of the woman body from the male gaze, enables us to wear less and still be seen (and heard). This reversal and adoration for fashion history is what Chloé Rogers, founder of the lingerie brand Scarlett Gasque, talked briefly with me about ahead of the launch of her latest collection titled The Grand Entrance.
Scarlett Gasque was founded in 2023 to blend burlesque with “self-empowerment and expression,” the brand said online. Rogers’ mother is a philanthropist and father is a successful businessman, so it only makes sense she took this bold step into entrepreneurship. I attended the Grand Entrance having never heard of the brand before and left with a hunger for each piece and admiration for the wealth of knowledge and compassion Rogers had for European women’s fashion history.
Scarlett Gasque is a blending of her great-grandmothers; Scarlett on her mother’s side and Gasque on that of her father. This is a blending of upper and lower class, she shared, noting one of her great-grandmother’s gave birth in a barn, while the other lived within luxury in London, England. This history is folded into the story she now tells through Scarlett Gasque.
Rogers is a graduate of Fashion History from Central Saint Martins, and through her brand takes the cultural significance of the undergarments in the 1800s and classifies them as ready-to-wear in 2025. While she used to live in England, she has moved the brand to New York City to work with ateliers, importing the laces she uses from Italy and France. This global approach to the brand is due to her keen attention to detailing. For example, the bride collection she has available is handmade in Paris and in one example, the intricate detailing took 29 hours to make, she said. Additionally, the Floral Affair Robe ($7,029 CAD) has hand sewn organzas to create dimension.
“It is vintage meets modern day romance. Studying fashion history and theory led me into this obsession with burlesque, then feminist politics, I did my thesis on that, and then into costume design,” Rogers said to me. “I wanted creative freedom to tie the clothing into historical references, making it a natural progression from inner skin to outer wear.”
Rogers shared the sizes range from XS to XL, the largest bra size being 38DD.
“We are working on expanding sizing and there are changes like we came out with our first A-size this year, working on XXL and expanding the robe sizing as right now they are SM and ML,” Rogers said.
What I admired the most about Scarlett Gasque was Rogers explaining her clothes are that break between inside and outside wear, saying for example, the robes she sells could be worn for a girlfriends hang out at home, or the lingerie sets serve a purpose for those times you don’t want to wear sweat pants but still want to feel chic.
At the launch event, majority of the guests wore corsets over their evening wear and it blended in seamlessly. It made me think of one of my favourite scenes in the film Eat, Pray, Love. Julia Roberts’s character, Elizabeth Gilbert, is in a lingerie shop with another woman who is shopping to enamour her partner. When asked to buy something, Gilbert asks “for whom?” To that, her taken friend says, “for you.” Often, single women hold ourselves back from experiences deeming it a milestone to cross only when we are partnered and for some, yes, even lingerie can be seen as that milestone. Scarlett Gasque asks you to consider the question, why wait?