By the start of the16th century Spanish fashions influenced Italian and English ladies. An iron hinged armour like corset was worn to flatten the body giving a smooth outline beneath gowns. The iron corset must have been exceptionally uncomfortable and heavy to wear and could only have been worn by Elizabethan ladies not doing any form of heavy work. Their only benefit seems to be that they produced the incredibly small waisted, elongated flat chested smooth line torso.
This was illustrated in paintings of great Elizabethan ladies wearing fabulous structured bejewelled gowns. Left - Elongated boyish flattened torso of Queen Elizabeth 1 in the long Elizabethan era - 1592/3. Held at National Portrait Gallery London.
Corsets of the late 16th century would be more recognizable to us today than the iron version. These later corsets incorporated materials such as whalebone, bone, wood and flexible steel. The patterns on the corsets showed the placement of the chosen support and were elongated after a fashion trend set by the boyish figure of Queen Elizabeth I.